Douglas Adams - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)

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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.

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Ford carried on counting quietly. This is about the most aggressive thing you can do to a computer, the equivalent of going up to a human being and saying "Blood...blood...blood...blood...

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The longest and most destructive party ever held is now into its fourth generation and still no one shows any signs of leaving. Somebody did once look at his watch, but that was eleven years ago now, and there has been no follow up.

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It's part of the shape of the Universe. I only have to talk to somebody and they begin to hate me.

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Simple. I got very bored and depressed, so I went and plugged myself in to its external computer feed. I talked to the computer at great length and explained my view of the Universe to it," said Marvin. "And what happened?" pressed Ford. "It committed suicide," said Marvin and stalked off back to the Heart of Gold.

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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 are 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?

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You are disoriented. Blackness swims toward you like a school of eels who have just seen something that eels like a lot.

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I've got this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side.

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

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Would you like to see the menu?" he said, "or would you like meet the Dish of the Day?"... Good evening, it lowed and sat back heavily on its haunches, I am the main Dish of the Day. May I interest you in parts of my body?

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This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays.

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Life, said Marvin dolefully, loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it.

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Deep in the fundamental heart of mind and Universe there is a reason.

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Arthur blinked at the screens and felt he was missing something important. Suddenly he realized what it was. "Is there any tea on this spaceship?" he asked.

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He didn't know why he had become president of the galaxy, except that it seemed a fun thing to be.

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Obviously somebody had been appallingly incompetent and he hoped to God it wasn't him.

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This planet has — or rather had — a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it was not the small pieces of paper that were unhappy.

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If there's any real truth, it's that the entire multidimensional infinity of the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs.

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I like the cover," he said. "Don't Panic. It's the first helpful or intelligible thing anybody's said to me all day.

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On the planet Earth Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much…the wheel, New York, wars, and so on, whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely the dolphins believed themselves to be more intelligent than man for precisely the same reasons.

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How can I tell," said the man, "that the past isn't a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind?

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Only by counting could humans demonstrate their independence of computers.

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For as long as he could remember, he'd suffered from a vague nagging feeling of being not all there.

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So the hours are pretty good then?' he resumed. The Vogon stared down at him as sluggish thoughts moiled around in the murky depths. Yeah,' he said, 'but now you come to mention it, most of the actual minutes are pretty lousy.

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In moments of great stress, every life form that exists gives out a tiny subliminal signal.

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Marvin was humming ironically because he hated humans so much.

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For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.

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Marvin started his ironical humming again. Zaphod hit him and he shut up.

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I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is.

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Did I do anything wrong today," he said, "or has the world always been like this and I've been too wrapped up in myself to notice?

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