Life, the Universe and Everything (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #3)

by Douglas Adams

“The Guide says that there is an art to flying,” said Ford, “or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.”

Arthur felt happy. He was terribly pleased that the day was for once working out so much according to plan. Only twenty minutes ago he had decided he would go mad, and now here he was already chasing a Chesterfield sofa across the fields of prehistoric Earth.

“So it has. Well, that’s one mystery less.

“People who talk to themselves on the phone,” said Ford, “never learn anything to their advantage.”

“I would like you to shut up about your towel,” said Ford.

Ford was beginning to behave rather strangely, or rather not actually beginning to behave strangely but beginning to behave in a way that was strangely different from the other strange ways in which he more regularly behaved.

“I see,” said Arthur, who didn’t.

Ford was humming something. It was just one note repeated at intervals. He was hoping that somebody would ask him what he was humming, but nobody did. If anybody had asked him he would have said he was humming the first line of a Noël Coward song called “Mad About the Boy” over and over again. It would then have been pointed out to him that he was only singing one note, to which he would have replied that for reasons that he hoped would be apparent, he was omitting the “about the boy” bit. He was annoyed that nobody asked.

a shrug which indicated total abdication of thought.

Arthur had adopted his normal crisis role, which was to stand with his mouth hanging open and let it all wash over him.

The Somebody Else’s Problem field is much simpler and more effective, and what is more can be run for over a hundred years on a single flashlight battery. This is because it relies on people’s natural predisposition not to see anything they don’t want to, weren’t expecting or can’t explain.

He wasn’t certain whether he had just got space-sickness or religion.

He was staring at the instruments with the air of one who is trying to convert Fahrenheit to centigrade in his head while his house is burning down.

Numbers written on restaurant checks within the confines of restaurants do not follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces of paper in any other parts of the Universe.

Let me give you an example. Think of a number, any number.” “Er, five,” said the mattress. “Wrong,” said Marvin. “You see?” The mattress was much impressed by this and realized that it was in the presence of a not unremarkable mind.

Prove it to me and I still won’t believe it.”

rthur materialized, and did so with all the customary staggering about and clasping at his throat, heart and various limbs that he still indulged himself in whenever he made any of these hateful and painful materializations that he was determined not to let himself get used to. He looked around for the others. They weren’t there. He looked around for the others again. They still weren’t there. He closed his eyes. He opened them. He looked around for the others. They obstinately persisted in their absence. He closed his eyes again, preparatory to making this completely futile exercise once more, and because it was only then, while his eyes were closed, that his brain began to register what his eyes had been looking at while they were open, a puzzled frown crept across his face. So he opened his eyes again to check his facts and the frown stayed put.

At some distance down the corridor it seemed suddenly as if somebody started to beat on a bass drum. He listened to it for a few seconds and realized that it was just his heart beating. He listened for a few seconds more and realized that it wasn’t his heart, it was somebody down the corridor beating on a bass drum.

He could tell that he hadn’t met the creature before from the simple fact that he was able to sleep at nights.

He paused for effect. As far as Arthur was concerned there was already quite enough effect going on.

In fact it would be fair to say that he had reached a level of annoyance the like of which had never been seen in the Universe.

He glanced up again, and realized that the arm that had puzzled him was represented as wantonly calling into existence a bowl of doomed petunias. This was not a concept that leaped easily to the eye.

The land began to slide, and he suddenly felt the force of the word “landslide” in a way that had never been apparent to him before. It had always just been a word to him, but now he was suddenly and horribly aware that sliding is a strange and sickening thing for land to do. It was doing it with him on it.

So he thought about tulips. It was difficult, but he did. He thought about the pleasing firm roundness of the bottom of tulips, he thought about the interesting variety of colors they came in, and wondered what proportion of the total number of tulips that grew, or had grown, on the Earth would be found within a radius of one mile from a windmill.

One of the problems, and it’s one that is obviously going to get worse, is that all the people at the party are either the children or the grandchildren or the great-grandchildren of the people who wouldn’t leave in the first place, and because of all the business about selective breeding and recessive genes and so on, it means that all the people now at the party are either absolutely fanatical partygoers, or gibbering idiots or, more and more frequently, both. Either way, it means that, genetically speaking, each succeeding generation is now less likely to leave than the preceding one.

Wherever he touched himself, he encountered a pain. After a short while he worked out that this was because it was his hand that was hurting.

And with that he launched into the most extraordinary and spectacular fit of coughing that caught Arthur so much by surprise that he started to choke violently, discovered he was already doing it and got thoroughly confused. Together they performed a lung-busting duet that went on for fully two minutes before Arthur managed to cough and splutter to a halt. “So invigorating,” said the little man, panting and wiping tears from his eyes, “what an exciting life you must lead. Thank you very much.”

The party and the Krikkit warship looked, in their writhings, a little like two ducks, one of which is trying to make a third duck inside the second duck, while the second duck is trying very hard to explain that it doesn’t feel ready for a third duck right now, is uncertain that it would want any putative third duck to be made by this particular first duck anyway, and certainly not while it, the second duck, was busy flying.

t is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.

The best way to pick a fight with a Silastic Armorfiend of Striterax was just to be born.