"Time is rhythm: the insect rhythm of a warm humid night, brain ripple, breathing, the drum in my temple—these are our faithful timekeepers; and reason corrects the feverish beat."

"...male lust does not go very far for descriptive felicities!"

"...Time is a fluid medium for the culture of metaphors."

"Here a heckler asked, with the arrogant air of one wanting to see a gentleman’s driving license, how did the “Prof” reconcile his refusal to grant the future the status of Time with the fact that it, the future, could hardly be considered nonexistent, since “it possessed at least one future, I mean, feature, involving such an important idea as that of absolute necessity.” Throw him out. Who said **I** shall die?"

"Man, in that sense, will never die, because there may never be a taxonomical point in his evolutionary progress that can be determined as the last stage of man in the cline turning him into Neohomo, or some horrible throbbing slime."

"Oh, come, art cannot hurt. It can and how!"

"Life, love, libraries, have no future."

"Remembrance, embers and membranes of beauty make artists and morons lose all self-control."

"Tropes are the dreams of speech."

"" 'All our old loves are corpses or wives.' All our sorrows are virgins or whores." (See Algernon Charles Swinburne: "Time turns the old days to derision, / Our loves into corpses or wives; / And marriage and death and division / Make barren our lives.")"

"But we are not 'different'! Think and dream are the same in French."

"...if people remembered the same they would not be different people."

"All bright kids are depraved."

"Ardis Hall—the Ardors and Arbors of Ardis—this is the leitmotiv rippling through Ada, an ample and delightful chronicle, whose principal part is staged in a dream-bright America—for are not our childhood memories comparable to Vineland-born caravelles, indolently encircled by the white birds of dreams?"

"What (Ada asks) are eyes anyway? Two holes in the mask of life. What (she asks) would they mean to a creature from another corpuscle or milk bubble whose organ of sight was (say) an internal parasite resembling the written word 'deified'? What, indeed, would a pair of beautiful (human, lemurian, owlish) eyes mean to anybody if found lying on the seat of a taxi?"

"Remembrance, like Rembrandt, is dark but festive. Remembered ones dress up for the occasion and sit still. Memory is a photo-studio de luxe on an infinite Fifth Power Avenue."

"“First I’ve heard of it,” said Arthur, “why’s it got to be built?” Mr. Prosser shook his finger at him for a bit, then stopped and put it away again. “What do you mean, why’s it got to be built?” he said. “It’s a bypass. You’ve got to build bypasses.” Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often to wonder what’s so great about point A that so many people from point B are so keen to get there, and what’s so great about point B that so many people from point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be."

"What do you think I am, completely without any moral whatsits, what are they called, those moral things?"

"Humans are not proud of their ancestors, and rarely invite them round to dinner."

"Marvin: This is the car park, you ordered a babe wash for your ship. Due to staff shortages, I am your babe."

"Was I amongst friends when the Haggunenon admiral evolved into a life pod and everybody aboard his flagship escaped leaving me aboard as it steered itself into the nearest star? Was I amongst friends when I was left to walk in circles on a swamp planet? Left to park cars outside a restaurant for millenia? Left for the Krikkit robots to use for batting practice? Friend? I don't think I ever came across one of those, sorry, can't help you there."

"Man in Shack: The lord knows I am not a cruel man."

"Man in Shack: I say what it occurs to me to say when I think I hear people say things. More I cannot say."

"I ache, therefore I am."

"Will everything tie up neatly or will it be just like life: quite interesting in parts, but no substitute for the real thing? What is the real thing?"

"The Book: Incredible though it may seem, it is in fact possible that the strange and terrible history of the planet Brontitall, where Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect and Zaphod Beeblebrox are even now falling out of the sky on to curious and aggravating birds, admiring surprisingly large statues of unexpected people, i.e. Arthur Dent, exchanging hostile words with alien soldiers with inexplicable limps and generally having a fairly peculiar time of it, may yet admit of some form of explanation. Furthermore, it is possible that this explanation will have more than a little to do with the mysterious somethings or watchamacallits of which the bird people refuse to speak. On top of which it is also possible that Lintilla the archaeologist (who may possibly turn out to have an almost impossibly strange life story) may play a major part in the uncovering of this explanation. It is even possible that pigs will fly, or that everyone will live happily ever after. In an infinite Universe everything, even The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, is possible."

"The Book: Having been through the Total Perspective Vortex, Zaphod Beeblebrox now knows himself to be the most important being in the entire Universe...something he had hitherto only suspected. 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..."

"Life, as many people have spotted, is, of course, terribly unfair. For instance, the first time the Heart of Gold ever crossed the galaxy the massive improbability field it generated caused two hundred and thirty-nine thousand lightly-fried eggs to materialise in a large, wobbly heap on the famine-struck land of Poghril in the Pansel system. The whole Poghril tribe had just died out from famine...except for one man who died of cholesterol poisoning some weeks later."

"Frogstar Robot: Out of my way little robot"

"Ford Prefect: You know, in these sorts of situations it's really good to have a guide to help you."

"Zaphod: The building's being bombed! Who in their right minds would want to bomb a publishing company?"

"The other Shaltanac's joopleberry shrub is always a more mauvy shade of pinky-russet."

"Zaphod: Can it Trillian, I'm trying to die with dignity. Marvin: I'm just trying to die."

"Arthur Dent: 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!"

"Marvin: Life, don't talk to me about life."

"Marvin: Do you want me to sit in a corner and rust or just fall apart where I'm standing?"

"There is no such thing as a happy ending. Every culture has a maxim that makes this point, while nowhere in the Universe is there a single gravestone that reads, He Loved Everything About His Life, Especially the Dying Bit at the End."

""You go ahead and kill yourself, don't worry about me." – Trillian"

"Think before you pluck. Irresponsible plucking costs lives."

"There is a theory which states that the universe is built on uncertainty and that a definitive statement/action creates a momentary energy vacuum into which flows a diametrically opposing statement/action. Famous vacuum-inducing statements include:"

"For a being of light, gazing even for a moment into the heart of dark space has an effect equivalent to a dozen near-death experiences. It's the Universe's way of telling you to get on with your life. Which is a good thing if the feeling budding in a person's heart is a good feeling."

"Arthur was stumped. How was he to feel if not put upon?"

""Hello, ladies. You may not know me yet, but you're gonna miss me tomorrow."—Zaphod Beeblebrox"

""Don't worry. I've been in show business for years; I know how to handle bastards."—Zaphod Beeblebrox"

""Don't give any money to the unicorns, it only encourages them."—Eric the Red"

""I do not hate myself. In many ways, I am not altogether too bed." – Constant Mown"

"Gazing up at a god's crotch can do wonders for a person's lack of low self-esteem."

"It's not every day a Galactic President gets dumped out of an air lock by his own head."