Old woman Oracle: "Can you help me pull out the photocopier?"
Arthur: "What?"
OWO: "The photocopier. It's solar-powered, but I have to keep it in the cave so the birds don't shit on it."

"This Arthur Dent," comes the cry from the farthest reaches of the galaxy, and has even now been found inscribed on a deep space probe thought to originate from an alien galaxy at a distance too hideous to contemplate, "what is he, man or mouse? Is he interested in nothing more than tea and the wider issues of life? Has he no spirit? Has he no passion? Does he not, to put it in a nutshell, fuck?"
Those who wish to know should read on. Others may wish to skip on to the last chapter which is a good bit and has Marvin in it.

He (Zaphod) then had another quick one (drink) to follow the first one down and check that it was all right. [...] sent a third drink down to see why the second one hadn't yet reported on the condition of the first. [...] He poured a drink down his other throat with the plan it would head the other one off at the pass, join forces with it, and together they would get the second to pull itself together, give it a good talking to and maybe a bit of a sing as well. He felt uncertain as to whether the fourth drink had understood all that, so he sent down a fifth drink to explain the plan more fully and a sixth for moral support. Zaphod drinking, after meeting the Man Who Rules the Universe.

"And the wheel," said the Captain, "what about this wheel thingy? It sounds a terribly interesting project."
"Ah," said the marketing girl, "well, we're having a little difficulty there."
"Difficulty?" exclaimed Ford. "Difficulty? What do you mean, difficulty? It's the single simplest machine in the entire Universe!"
The marketing girl soured him with a look. "All right Mr. Wiseguy," she said, "you're so clever, you tell us what color it should be."

"I am the main Dish of the Day. May I interest you in parts of my body?"

Getting a movie made in Hollywood is like trying to grill a steak by having a succession of people coming into the room and breathing on it.

In fact, I wanted to be John Cleese and it took some time to realize the job was in fact taken.

The Macintosh may only have 10% of the market, but it is clearly the top 10%.

Mozart tells us what it's like to be human, Beethoven tells us what it's like to be Beethoven and Bach tells us what it's like to be the universe.

The hotel shop only had two decent books, and I'd written both of them.

It'd be like a bunch of rivers, the Amazon and the Mississippi and the Congo asking how the Atlantic Ocean might affect them… and the answer is of course is that they won't be rivers anymore, just currents in the ocean. On his response to representatives of the music, publishing and broadcasting industries who asked Douglas at a conference how he thought technological changes will affect them.

Here the man in blue crimplene accosted us once more but we patiently explained to him that he could fuck off.

"What really is the point of trying to teach anything to anybody?" This question seemed to provoke a murmur of sympathetic approval from up and down the table.
Richard continued, "What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that's really the essence of programming. By the time you've sorted out a complicated idea into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you've learned something about it yourself.

Deep Thought: "The answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything is..."
Philosophers:"Yes?..."
Deep Thought:"IS..."
Philosophers (slightly higher):"Yes?..."
Deep Thought: "IS..."
Philosophers (really high):"Yes?..."
Deep Thought: 42.
Philosopher 1:"We are gonna get lynched y'know that?"

The regular early morning yell of horror was the sound of Arthur Dent waking up and suddenly remembering where he was.

"Well, you’re obviously being totally naive", Said the girl, "When you’ve been in marketing as long as I have, you know that before any new product can be developed it has to be properly researched. We’ve got to find out what people want from fire, how they relate to it, what sort of image it has for them."
"Stick it up your nose," he [Ford] said.
"Which is precisely the sort of thing we need to know," insisted the girl. "Do people want fire that can be fitted nasally?"

"Oh don't give me none more of that Old Janx Spirit
No, don't you give me none more of that Old Janx Spirit
For my head will fly, my tongue will lie, my eyes will fry and I may die
Won't you pour me one more of that sinful Old Janx Spirit" Ancient Orion mining song.

It just told me what I already knew, that I'm a great and amazing guy, didn't I tell you baby, I'm Zaphod Beeblebrox.

"It is said that his birth was marked by earthquakes, tidal waves, tornadoes, firestorms, the explosion of three neighbouring stars, and, shortly afterwards, by the issuing of over six and three quarter million writs for damages from all of the major landowners in his Galactic sector. However, the only person by whom this is said is Beeblebrox himself, and there are several possible theories to explain this."

It was his subconscious which told him this - that infuriating part of a person's brain which never responds to interrogation, merely gives little meaningful nudges and then sits humming quietly to itself, saying nothing.

Dennis Hutch had stepped up into the top seat when its founder had died of a lethal overdose of brick wall, taken while under the influence of a Ferrari and a bottle of tequila.

Here is what to do if you wnat to get lift from a Vogon: forget it . They areone of the most unpleasant races in the galaxy - not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous. They wouldn't even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Revenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters

"Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is." - (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)

Someone or something seemed to be expecting him, for at that moment there lit up suddenly in the dark distance an eerie green neon sign. It said, silently: YOU HAVE BEEN DIVERTED..., ARTHUR DENT. WELCOME, I DON'T THINK. DO NOT BE ALARMED. BE VERY, VERY FRIGHTENED, ARTHUR DENT.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy [...] says of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation products that 'it is very easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all.'
'In other words - and this is the rock solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation's Galaxy-wide success is founded - their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws.'