The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is the greatest book of the 1980s. Well, set of books since there are five of them. Here is a very small selection of quotes from them.
The house had four windows set in the front of a size and proportion which more or less exactly failed to please the eye.
Bypasses are devices which allow some people to drive from point A to point B very fast whilst other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people of point B are so keen to get there, and what's so great about point B that so many people of point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be.
"It is most gratifying," it said, "that your enthusiasm for our planet continues unabated, and so we would like to assure you that the guided missiles currently converging with your ship are part of a special service we extend to all of our most enthusiastic clients, and the fully armed nuclear warheads are of course merely a courtesy detail. We look forward to your custom in future lives ... thank you."
"Hey this is terrific!" he said. "Someone down there is trying to
kill us!"
"Terrific," said Arthur.
"But don't you see what this means?"
"Yes. We're going to die."
"Yes, but apart from that."
"Apart from that?"
"It means we must be on to something!"
"How soon can we get off it?"
One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of accidentally becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem involved in becoming your own father or mother that a broadminded and well-adjusted family can't cope with. ... The major problem is quite simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveller's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will tell you for instance how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it. ... Most readers get as far as the Future Semi-Conditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up: and in fact in later editions of the book all the pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs.
"He's spending a year dead for tax reasons."
"Yes," called out the sort of people who call out "yes" when comedians ask them if they're having a wonderful time.
The first non-absolute number is the number of people for whom the table is reserved. This will vary during the course of the first three telephone calls to the restaurant, and then bear no apparent relation to the number of people who actually turn up, or to the number of people who subsequently join them after the show/match/party/gig, or to the number of people who leave when they see who else has turned up.
Several billion trillion tons of superhot exploding hydrogen nuclei rose slowly above the horizon and managed to look small, cold and slightly damp.
There is a moment in every dawn when light floats, there is the possibility of magic. Creation holds its breath. The moment passed as it regularly did on Squornshellous Zeta, without incident.
"My capacity for happiness," he added, "you could fit into a matchbox without taking out the matches first."
"This is what I said. I said, 'I would like to say that it is a very great pleasure, honour and privilege for me to open this bridge, but I can't because my lying circuits are all out of commission. I hate and despise you all. I now declare this hapless cyberstructure open to the unthinkable abuse of all who wantonly cross her.'
"Friend!" croaked the robot pathetically. "You'll have to excuse me while I try and remember what the word means. My memory banks are not what they were you know, and any word which falls into disuse for a few zillion years has to get shifted down into auxiliary memory back-up. Ah, here it comes... Hmm, what a curious concept... No, don't think I ever came across one of those. Sorry, can't help you there."
Nothing
travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception
of bad news.
