Great Throughts Treasury

"When the girl sitting at the next table looked away from a moment, Dirk leaned over and took her coffee. He knew that he was perfectly safe doing this because she would simply not be able to believe that this had happened."

"When you blame others, you give up your power to change."

"When you walk through the storm, hold your head high and don't be afraid of the dark! At the end of the storm is a golden sky and the sweet song of the lark. Walk on through the wind walk on through the rain though your dreams be tossed & blown walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart and you'll never walk alone!"

"When you're a student or whatever, and you can't afford a car, or a plane fare, or even a train fare, all you can do is hope that someone will stop and pick you up."

"When you're cruising down the road in the fast lane and you lazily sail past a few hard-driving cars and are feeling pretty pleased with yourself and then accidently change down from fourth to first instead of third thus making your engine leap out of your hood in a rather ugly mess, it tends to throw you off stride in much the same way that this remark threw Ford Prefect off his."

"Who can possibly rule if no one who wants to do it can be allowed to?"

"Who is this god person anyway?"

"Why are people born? Why do they die? Why do they want to spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches?"

"Why' is the only question that bothers people enough to have an entire letter of the alphabet named after it. The alphabet does not go 'A B C D What? When? How?' but it does go 'V W X Why? Z."

"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."

"Why?' is always the most difficult question to answer. You know where you are when someone asks you 'What's the time?' or 'When was the battle of 1066?' or 'How do these seatbelts work that go tight when you slam the brakes on, Daddy?' The answers are easy and are, respectively, 'Seven-thirty in the evening,' 'Ten-fifteen in the morning,' and 'Don't ask stupid questions."

"Will you stop counting!' snarled Zaphod. 'Yes,' said Ford Prefect, 'in three minutes and thirty-five seconds."

"With a rubber duck, one's never alone."

"Woe is me! ' God says, 'I had not thought of that!' and immediately disappears in a puff of logic."

"WOKING (vb.) To enter the kitchen with the precise determination to perform something only to forget what it is just before you do it."

"Words used carelessly, as if they did not matter in any serious way, often allowed otherwise well-guarded truths to seep through."

"Would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?"

"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?"

"Wow,' said Zaphod Beeblebrox to the Heart of Gold. There wasn't much else he could say. He said it again because he knew it would annoy the press. 'Wow.' The crowd turned their faces back toward him expectantly. He winked at Trillian, who raised her eyebrows and widened her eyes at him. She knew what he was about to say and thought him a terrible show-off. 'That is really amazing.' he said. 'That really is truly amazing. That is so amazingly amazing I think I'd like to steal it.' A marvelous presidential quote, absolutely true to form. The crowd laughed appreciativley, the newsman gleefully punched buttons on their Sub-Etha News-Matics and the President grinned. As he grinned his heart screamed unbearably and he fingered the small Paralyso-Matic bomb that nestled quietly in his pocket. Finally he could bear it no more. He lifted his heads up to the sky, let out a wild whoop in major thirds, threw the bomb to the ground and ran forward through the sea of suddenly frozen beaming smiles."

"Yes it is,' said the Professor. 'Wait—' he motioned to Richard, who was about to go out again and investigate— 'let it be. It won't be long.' Richard stared in disbelief. 'You say there's a horse in your bathroom, and all you can do is stand there naming Beatles songs?' The Professor looked blankly at him."

"Yes, it is true that sometimes unusually intelligent and sensitive children can appear to be stupid. But stupid children can sometimes appear to be stupid as well. I think that's something you might have to consider."

"Yes, it was an act of God. But which God?"

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

"You ARE Zaphod Beeblebrox?' '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,' it squealed, 'I just heard on the sub-ether radio report. It said you were dead...' 'Yeah, that's right, I just haven't stopped moving yet."

"You barbarians!' he yelled. 'I'll sue the council for every penny it's got! I'll have you hung, drawn and quartered! And whipped! And boiled...until...until...until...until you've had enough.' Ford was running after him. Very very fast. 'And then I will do it again!' yelled Arthur, 'And when I've finished I will take all the little bits, and I will jump on them!"

"You cannot see what I see because you see what you see. You cannot know what I know because you know what you know. What I see and what I know cannot be added to what you see and what you know because they are not of the same kind. Neither can it replace what you see and what you know, because that would be to replace you yourself. Hang on, can I write this down? said Arthur, excitedly fumbling in his pocket for a pencil."

"You can't dodge your responsibilities by saying they don't exist!"

"You come to me for advice, but you can't cope with anything you don't recognize. Hmmm. So we'll have to tell you something you already know but make it sound like news, eh Well, business as usual , I suppose."

"You just come along with me and have a good time. The Galaxy's a fun place. You'll need to have this fish in your ear."

"You know what a learning experience is? A learning experience is one of those things that says, You know that thing you just did? Don't do that."

"You know,' he said, sitting back, reflectively, 'it's at times like this that you kind of wonder if it's worth worrying about the fabric of space-time and the causal integrity of the multidimensional probability matrix and the potential collapse of all waveforms in the Whole Sort of General Mish Mash and all that sort of stuff that's been bugging me."

"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. Why, what did she tell you?I don't know, I didn't listen."

"You may not instantly see why I bring the subject up, but that is because my mind works so phenomenally fast, and 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. Er, five, said the mattress. Wrong, said Marvin. You see?"

"You see? he said dropping his cigarette butt, They even keep it on at weekends. Someone was bound to notice sooner or later. But the catflap ... ah, there is a very different matter. Invention, pure creative invention. It is a door within a door, you see."

"You would probably not say that he was sleeping the sleep of the just, unless you meant the just asleep, but it was certainly the sleep of someone who was not fooling about when he climbed into bed of a night and turned off the light."

"You'll have a national Philosopher's strike on your hands!"

"Your God person puts an apple tree in the middle of a garden and says, do what you like, guys, oh, but don't eat the apple. Surprise surprise, they eat it and he leaps out from behind a bush shouting Gotcha. It wouldn't have made any difference if they hadn't eaten it.' 'Why not?' 'Because if you're dealing with somebody who has the sort of mentality which likes leaving hats on the pavement with bricks under them you know perfectly well they won't give up. They'll get you in the end."

"You're a jerk,' repeated the alien, 'a complete asshole."

"You're so unhip, it's a wonder your bum doesn't fall off."

"Zaphod Beeblebrox crawled bravely along a tunnel, like the hell of a guy he was. He was very confused, but he continued crawling doggedly anyway because he was that brave."

"Zaphod Beeblebrox, adventurer, ex-hippie, good-timer (crook? quite possibly), manic self-publicist, terrible bad at personal relationships, often thought to be completely out to lunch."

"Zaphod did not want to tangle with them and, deciding that just as discretion is the better part of valor, so was cowardice is the better part of discretion, he valiantly hid himself in a closet."

"Zaphod felt he was teetering on the edge of madness and wondered if he shouldn't just jump over and have done with it."

"Zaphod left the controls for Ford to figure out, and lurched over to Arthur. Look, Earthman, he said angrily, you've got a job to do, right? The Question to the Ultimate Answer, right? What, that thing? said Arthur, I thought we'd forgotten about that. Not me, baby. Like the mice said, it's worth a lot of money in the right quarters. And it's all locked up in that head thing of yours. Yes but ... But nothing! Think about it. The Meaning of Life! We get our fingers on that we can hold every shrink in the Galaxy up to ransom, and that's worth a bundle. I owe mine a mint. Arthur took a deep breath without much enthusiasm. Alright, he said, but where do we start? How should I know? They say the Ultimate Answer or whatever is Forty-two, how am I supposed to know what the question is? It could be anything. I mean, what's six times seven? Zaphod looked at him hard for a moment. Then his eyes blazed with excitement. Forty-two! he cried. Arthur wiped his palm across his forehead. Yes, he said patiently, I know that. Zaphod's faces fell. I'm just saying that the question could be anything at all, said Arthur, and I don't see how I am meant to know."

"Zaphod marched quickly down the passageway, nervous as hell, but trying to hide it by striding purposefully."