The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by
Douglas Adams, 1979.
"I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer."
Marvin: "I am at a rough estimate thirty billion times more intelligent than you. Let me give you an example. Think of a number, any number."
Zem: "Er, five."
Marvin: "Wrong. You see?"
"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."
"You know," said Arthur, "it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and 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:] "I don't know, I didn't listen."
"My capacity for happiness," he added, "you could fit into a matchbox without taking out the matches first"
"What's up?" [asked Ford.]
"I don't know," said Marvin, "I've never been there."
"Listen, three eyes,", he said, "don't you try to outweird me, I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal."
"Six pints of bitter," said Ford Prefect to the barman of the Horse and Groom. "And quickly please, the world's about to end."
"I've seen it. It's rubbish." About a Magrathean sunset that Arthur finds magnificent.
On being left in a parking lot for 500 million years: "The first ten million years were the worst. And the second ten million years, they were the worst too. The third ten million years I didn't enjoy at all. After that I went into sort of a decline"
"My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fiber, and that I am therefore excused from saving Universes."
Zaphod: "Can it Trillian, I'm trying to die with dignity."
Marvin: "I'm just trying to die."
"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.
Arthur: "Ford, I think I'm a sofa."
Ford: "I know how you feel."
"If I ever meet myself," said Zaphod, "I'll hit myself so hard I won't know what's hit me."
"Well, just who do you think you are, honey?" flounced the insect quivering its wings in rage, "Zaphod Beeblebrox or something?"
"Count the heads," said Zaphod in a low rasp.
The insect blinked at him. It blinked at him again.
"You are Zaphod Beeblebrox?" it squeaked.
"Yeah," said Zaphod, "but don't shout it out or they'll all want one."
"The Zaphod Beeblebrox?"
"No, just a Zaphod Beeblebrox, didn't you hear I come in six packs?"
"But sir, I heard you were dead."
"That's right, I just haven't stopped moving yet."
"I'm so amazingly cool you could keep a side of meat inside me for a month. I am so hip I have difficulty seeing over my pelvis."
Marvin: "And then of course I've got this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side."
Arthur: "Is that so?"
Marvin: "Oh yes. I mean I've asked for them to be replaced, but no one ever listens."
Arthur: "I can imagine"
"If I had two heads like you, Zaphod, I could have hours of fun banging them against a wall."
"Who said anything about panicking?" snapped Arthur. "This is still just the culture shock. You wait till I've settled down into the situation and found my bearings. Then I'll start panicking!"
Ford stood up. "We're safe," he said.
"Oh good," said Arthur.
"We're in a small galley cabin," said Ford, "in one of the spaceships of the Vogon Constructor Fleet."
"Ah," said Arthur, "this is obviously some strange usage of the word safe that I wasn't previously aware of."
"This must be Thursday," said Arthur musing to himself, sinking low over his beer, "I never could get the hang of Thursdays."
Trillian: "that's just fine, really... just part of life."
Marvin: "Life. Don't talk to me about life."
"I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed."
"I seem to be having this tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle. As soon as I reach some kind of definite policy about what is my kind of music and my kind of restaurant and my kind of overdraft, people start blowing up my kind of planet and throwing me out of their kind of spaceships!"
