The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy of Five

by Douglas Adams

The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t.

One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious, as in It’s a nice day, or You’re very tall, or Oh dear you seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you all right? At first Ford had formed a theory to account for this strange behaviour. If human beings don’t keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up. After a few months’ consideration and observation he abandoned this theory in favour of a new one. If they don’t keep exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working.

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?

‘I only know as much about myself as my mind can work out under its current conditions. And its current conditions are not good.’

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

‘If I ever meet myself,’ said Zaphod, ‘I’ll hit myself so hard I won’t know what’s hit me.’