Life, The Universe And Everything by Douglas Adams
"Time is the worst place, so to speak, to get lost in."
"It's a mistake to try and understand mathematics, they only worry me."
"My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fibre, and that I am therefore excused from saving Universes."
"And all participated in a little dance together – a complex routine involving the manipulation of menus, bill pads, wallets, cheque books, credit cards, watches, pencils and paper napkins, which seemed to be hovering constantly on the edge of violence, but never actually getting anywhere."
"Just as Einstein observed that time was not an absolute but depended on the observer's movement in space, and that space was not an absolute, but depended on the observer's movement in time, so it is now realized that numbers are not absolute, but depend on the observer's movement in restaurants."
"Numbers written on restaurant bills 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."
"There is a moment in every dawn when light floats, there is the possibility of magic. Creation holds its breath."
"My capacity for happiness," he added, "you could fit into a matchbox without taking out the matches first."
"The Universe is a figment of its own imagination."
"It is vitally important not to believe them or they will suddenly be right."
"You must surely know," said Slartibartfast to Ford, "what it is that is about to happen?"
"No," said Slartibartfast, with a slight quickening of his step, "the people of Krikkit have never thought to themselves `We are alone in the Universe.' They are surrounded by a huge Dust Cloud, you see, their single sun with its single world, and they are right out on the utmost eastern edge of the Galaxy. Because of the Dust Cloud there has never been anything to see in the sky. At night it is totally blank, During the day there is the sun, but you can't look directly at that so they don't. They are hardly aware of the sky. It's as if they had a blind spot which extended 180 degrees from horizon to horizon."
"Imagine," he said, "never even thinking `We are alone' simply because it has never occurred to you to think that there's any other way to be."
"They did not realize that because of the quasi-reciprocal and circular nature of all Improbability calculations, anything that was Infinitely Improbable was actually very likely to happen almost immediately."
"The same event which saw the disastrous failure of one science in its infancy also witnessed the apotheosis of another."
"However important you think you are, or how vital the secret project you are working on, you're only a heartbeat away from being yesterday's news."
"Ford Prefect was extremely grateful, as he strapped himself in, that this was just another Informational Illusion, and that he was therefore completely safe."
"The coldness and heaviness and blankness of it took a slow grip on Arthur's heart."
"It'll have to go," the men of Krikkit said as they headed back for home.
"The Galaxy, which had been enjoying a period of unusual peace and prosperity at the time, reeled like a man getting mugged in a meadow."
"We won," he repeated, "but that's no big deal."
"Nothing is lost for ever," said Slartibartfast, "except for the Cathedral of Chalesm."
"Arthur materialized, and did so with all the customary staggering about and clasping at his throat, heart, and various limbs."
"Do Not be Alarmed. Be Very Very Frightened, Arthur Dent."
"It occurred to him almost instantly, with the instinctive correctness that self-preservation instils in the mind, that he mustn't try to think about it."
"So he thought about tulips. It was difficult, but he did."
"He wondered for a moment how he was going to get back down to it, but instantly shied away from that area of speculation again, and tried to look at the situation steadily."
"The sensation, when he allowed himself to be aware of it, was so quietly ecstatic that he could not bear the thought of losing it, perhaps for ever."
"The party had attacked and raided an awful lot of it, and no one has ever succeeded in hitting it back because of the erratic and unpredictable way in which it lurches round the sky."
"He looked up again. 'We have this bomb now, you see,' he said, 'it's just a little one.'"
"'It's all right,' she said quietly but clearly enough for all the shadowy crowd to hear, 'you don't have to do it.'"
"He had found himself in a long, wide and badly lit corridor in which he was able to hide until he worked out what he was going to do next."
"It was as if it was a full-scale model of one – a solid blueprint."
"Well, in the few skirmishes they've had recently, it seems that they go into battle, raise their weapons to fire and suddenly think, why bother? What, cosmically speaking, is it all about? And they just seem to get a little tired and a little grim."
"Now the world has gone to bed, Darkness won't engulf my head, I can see by infra-red, How I hate the night."
"Yes," said Marvin. "Why stop now just when I'm hating it?"
"It's brilliant," said Marvin, "they're not. They got as far as designing it before they were locked in the envelope. They've spent the last five years building it. They think they've got it right but they haven't. They're as stupid as any other organic life form. I hate them."
"That's not just stupid, that is spectacularly obtuse."
"Without me, of course, when they were locked away from me in the envelope of Slo-Time, their responses became very confused and they were unable to manage."
"Ah well, ah well," he added, "I was only trying to fulfill my function."
"Yes," said Hactar, "you're going to disperse me. You are going to destroy my consciousness. Please be my guest – after all these aeons, oblivion is all I crave. If I haven't already fulfilled my function, then it's too late now. Thank you and good night."
"And when the trial continued," he said in a weeping whisper, "they asked Prak a most unfortunate thing. They asked him," he paused and shivered, "to tell the Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth. Only, don't you see?"
"It is written," repeated Prak, "in thirty-foot-high letters of fire on top of the Quentulus Quazgar Mountains in the land of Sevorbeupstry on the planet Preliumtarn, third out from the sun Zarss in Galactic Sector QQ7 Active J Gamma. It is guarded by the Lajestic Vantrashell of Lob."