The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1)

by Douglas Adams

Zaphod Beeblebrox was on his way from the tiny spaceport on Easter Island (the name was an entirely meaningless coincidence – in Galacticspeke, easter means small flat and light brown) to the Heart of Gold island, which by another meaningless coincidence was called France.

The only sort of Vogon a Dentrassi liked to see was an annoyed Vogon.

henceforth make all hyperspatial express routes unnecessary.

It tells you everything you need to know about anything.

‘On no account allow a Vogon to read poetry at you.’

I repeat, all planet leave is cancelled. I’ve just had an unhappy love affair, so I don’t see why anybody else should have a good time.

The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brain-wave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish. ‘Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.

‘The argument goes something like this: “I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.” ‘ “But,” says Man, “the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.” ‘ “Oh dear,” says God, “I hadn’t thought of that,” and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic. ‘ “Oh, that was easy,” says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

‘Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo’s kidneys, but that didn’t stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book Well That About Wraps It Up For God. ‘Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races an...

The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination.

‘Ford,’ he said, ‘there’s an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they’ve worked out.’

Trillian had come to suspect that the main reason why he had had such a wild and successful life was that he never really understood the significance of anything he did.

She wished she knew what it was she was trying not to think about.

Magrathea)

at least no one worth speaking

low ghostly music floated through the bridge: Marvin was humming ironically because he hated humans so much.

Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

‘When you walk through the storm . . .’ it whined nasally, ‘hold your head up high .

Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was, Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the Universe than we do now.

An expression of deep worry and concern failed to cross either of Zaphod’s faces.

Only by counting could humans demonstrate their independence of computers.

A few minutes later he opened and closed the hatch-way again in response to a command that caught him entirely by surprise.

‘What, are you, crazy?’ ‘It’s a possibility I haven’t ruled out yet,’ said Zaphod quietly. ‘I only know as much about myself as my mind can work out under its current conditions. And its current conditions are not good.’

though he was later discovered to be lying.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

five minutes before the completion of the purpose for which it was built,

what’s the use of our sitting up half the night arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machine only goes and gives you his bleeding phone number the next morning?’

salient

Because Ford never learned to say his original name, his father eventually died of shame, which is still a terminal disease in some parts of the Galaxy.