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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Quotes

The Book: "This is the story of 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy', perhaps the most remarkable, certainly the most successful book ever to come out of the great publishing corporation of Ursa Minor. More popular than the 'Celestial Home Care Omnibus', better selling than '53 More Things to Do in Zero Gravity', and more controversial than Oolon Colluphid's trilogy of philosophical blockbusters: 'Where God Went Wrong', 'Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes', and 'Who Is This God Person, Anyway?'"

Prosser: "But the plans were on display."
Arthur Dent: "On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar."
Prosser: "That's the display department."
Arthur Dent: "With a torch."
Prosser: "The lights had probably gone."
Arthur Dent: "So had the stairs."
Prosser: "But you did see the notice, didn't you?"
Arthur Dent: "Oh, yes. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign outside the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard.' Ever thought of going into advertising?"

Ford Prefect: "And no sneaky knocking Mr. Dent's house down while he's away, all right?"
Prosser: "The slightest thought hadn't even begun to speculate about the merest possibility of crossing my mind."
Arthur Dent: "Can we trust him?"
Ford Prefect: "Myself, I'd trust him till the end of the Earth."
Arthur Dent: "Yes, but how far's that?"
Ford Prefect: "About twelve minutes away."

[about Vogon Constructor ships]
The Book: "They hung in the air exactly the same way that bricks don't."

Arthur Dent: "I like the cover. 'Don't Panic'. It's the first helpful or intelligible thing anyone has said to me all day."

The Book: "Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the galaxy lies a small, unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly 92 million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a really neat idea."

The Book: "The Argument goes something like this: 'I refuse to prove that I exist' says God, 'For proof denies faith and without faith I am nothing.' 'BUT,' says Man, 'The Babel Fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It proves you exist, so therefore you don't. QED.' 'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that.' And promptly vanishes in a puff of logic. 'Ooh, that was easy.' says Man and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets killed on the next zebra crossing."

Arthur Dent: "You know, it's at times like this, when I'm stuck in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, about to die of asphyxiation in deep space, that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young."
Ford Prefect: "Why? What did she tell you?"
Arthur Dent: "I don't know. I didn't listen."

Trillian: "Probability factor of one to one. We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can't cope with is therefore your own lookout."

Zaphod Beeblebrox: "Okay. So, ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking, huh?"

[poem]
Vogon Captain:
"O Frettled Gruntbuggly, thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee
Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes
And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles
lest I rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurgle-cruncheon
See if I don't!"

[repeated line]
Marvin: "Life. Don't talk to me about life."

Slartibartfast: "Come with me or you shall be late."
Arthur: "Late? Late for what?"
Slartibartfast: "What is your name, human?"
Arthur: "Dent. Arthur Dent."
Slartibartfast: "Late as in the late Dent Arthur Dent. It's a sort of threat, you see. Never been particularly good at them myself but I'm told they can be quite effective."

Arthur Dent: "The Earth."
Slartibartfast: "Well, the Earth Mark II, in fact. We're making a copy from our original blueprints."
Arthur Dent: "Are you telling me you originally 'made' the Earth?"
Slartibartfast: "Oh, yes. Did you ever go to a place - I think it was called Norway?"
Arthur Dent: "No. No, I didn't."
Slartibartfast: "Pity. That was one of mine. Won an award, you know."

Slartibartfast: "Excuse the mess. Most unfortunate. A diode blew in one of the life support computers. When we came to revive our cleaning staff, we discovered they'd been dead for thirty thousand years. Who's going to clean away the bodies? That's what nobody seems to have an answer for."

Zaphod Beeblebrox: "You mean they want to arrest me over the phone? Could be. I'm a pretty dangerous dude when I'm cornered."
Ford Prefect: "Yeah. You fall to pieces so fast that people get hit by the shrapnel."

Dish of the Day: "Good evening, madame and gentlemen. I am the main dish of the day. May I interest you in parts of my body?"

Dish of the Day: "May I urge you, sir, to consider my liver. It must be very rich and tender by now. I have been force feeding myself for months."
Arthur Dent: "Green salad, please."
Dish of the Day: "A Green salad?"

Zaphod Beeblebrox: "You guys are so unhip it's a wonder your bums don't fall off."

Zaphod Beeblebrox: "It's the weird color-scheme that freaks me. Every time you try to operate one of these weird black controls, which are labeled in black on a black background, a small black light lights up black to let you know you've done it."

Marvin: "Pardon me for breathing which I never do anyway so I don't know why I bother to say it, oh God I'm so depressed."

Ford Prefect: "Ah, this is futile. Five hundred and seventy-three committee meetings, you haven't even discovered 'fire' yet."

Arthur Dent: "I always said there was something fundamentally wrong with the universe."