And Another Thing... (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #6)

by Eoin Colfer

There is no such thing as a happy ending. Every culture has a maxim that makes this point, while nowhere in the Universe is there a single gravestone that reads, He Loved Everything About His Life, Especially the Dying Bit at the End. Rollit Klet, the Dentrassis independent-film-director-cum-chef says in his memoir Fish or Film: The First Cut is Mine!: “What you think is the happy ending is actually a brief respite before the serial killer that you thought was dead gets back up and butchers everyone except the girl with the biggest boobs, who dies first in the sequel the following year.” Or as Zem of Squornshellous Zeta succinctly put it: “The mattress never stays dry for long.” However, the number one most overused quote on the subject of endings, happy or otherwise, comes from an old man who lived on a pole in Hawalius, who said simply that “there is no such thing as an ending, or a beginning for that matter, everything is middle.” The quote ends on a more rambling note: “Middles are crap. I hate middles. Middles are all regretting the past and waiting for something interesting to happen. Middles can go Zark themselves as far as I’m concerned.”