Hitchhiker's Guide Quotes |
Hello. This is a blog dedicated to the wealth of wisdom and unabashed silliness that rests between the pages of the Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy of five (or six). Welcome. Make yourself at home. Grab a cuppa. And remember, don't panic. |
Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless
A reading of a passage from The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.
Hope you enjoy!
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels.
A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly because it has great practical value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars that shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini-raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindbogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you - daft as a brush, but very very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in the possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit, etc etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker may accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still know where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
Hence a phrase which has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in “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.)
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy
(Source: hitchhikersguidequotes)
| Arthur: | You know, it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and I'm 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: | Why, what did she tell you? |
| Arthur: | I don't know, I wasn't listening. |
Ford Prefect, Life, The Universe and Everything (via hitchhikersguidequotes)
bringing this back because it’s one of my favourites and has hardly any notes
(via needlesslydefiantwithtea)
| Zaphod: | I'm a pretty dangerous dude when I'm cornered. |
| Ford: | Yeah, you go to pieces so fast people get hit by the shrapnel. |
Ford Prefect, Life, the Universe and Everything
Ford Prefect, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
| Ford Prefect: | 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. |
| Arthur Dent: | Why not? |
| Ford Prefect: | 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. |
Douglas Adams, The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe
| Ford: | Life, is like a grapefruit. |
| Creature: | Er, how so? |
| Ford: | Well, it's sort of orangey-yellow and dimpled on the outside, wet and squidgy in the middle. It's got pips inside, too. Oh, and some people have half a one for breakfast. |
Douglas Adams, So Long And Thanks For All The Fish
First of all, let’s have some music to listen to, shall we?
And now, to the quotes! I decided to pick my favourites from the 42nd page of each book. According to one of the essays in The Anthology At The End Of The Universe there’s a big conspiracy that links to what can be found on the 42nd page. But I’m not going to talk about that. I’m just gonna do what I do best: quote!
There might be a few bonus quotes to do with 42 at the end, because I’m just nice like that. Also I realised halfway through this that this method was perhaps not the best way to go about the 42nd post in this blog. Oh well.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy
One of the things Ford had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious, as in ‘It’s a nice day’, ‘You’re very tall’, or ‘You seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you alright?’
At first Ford had formed a theory to account for this strange behaviour. If human beings don’t keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up. After a few months’ consideration and observation, he abandoned this theory in favour of a new one. If they don’t keep exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working.
After a while he abandoned this one as well as being obstructively cynical, and decided he quite liked human beings after all, but he always remained desperately worried about the terrible number of things they didn’t know about.
(I’ve already blogged this… oh well.)
“If I asked you where the hell we are,” said Arthur weakly, “would I regret it?”
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 some strange usage of the word safe that I wasn’t previously aware of.”
The Restaurant at The End Of The Universe
An impoverished hitchhiker visiting any planets in the Sirius star system these days can pick up easy money working as a counsellor for neurotic elevators.
“You know something,” Zaphod said to Marvin.
“More than you can possibly imagine.”
Life, the Universe and Everything
A nightmare storm of blistering light seared through the blackness and smacked a fair bit off the planet directly behind them.
Another world, another day, another dawn.
The early morning’s thinnest sliver of light appeared silently.
Several billion trillion tons of superhot exploding hydrogen nuclei rose slowly above the horizon and managed to look small, cold and slightly damp.
So long, and thanks for all the fish
From another direction he felt the sensation of being a sheep startled by a flying saucer, but it was virtually indistinguishable from the feeling of being a sheep startled by anything else it ever encountered, for they were creatures that learnt very little in their journey through life, and would be startled to see the sun rising in the morning, and astonished by all the green stuff in the fields.
He left the sheep and let his mind drift outwards sleepily in developing ripples. It felt the presence of other minds, hundreds of them, thousands in a web, some sleepy, some sleeping, some terribly excited, one fractured.
One fractured.
He passed it fleetingly and tried to feel for it again, but it eluded him like the other card with an apple on it in Pelmanism. He felt a spasm of excitement because he knew instinctively who it was, or at least who it was he wanted it to be, and once you know what it is you want to be true, instinct is a very useful device in enabling you to know that it is.
Mostly Harmless
Now logic is a wonderful thing but it has, as the processes of evolution discovered, certain drawbacks.
Anything that thinks logically can be fooled by something else that thinks at least as logically as it does. The easiest way to fool a completely logical robot is to feed it the same stimulus sequence over and over again so it gets locked in a loop.
Bonus quotes: 42
“Good morning,” said Deep Thought at last.
“Er… good morning, O Deep Thought,” said Loonquawl nervously, “do you have… er, that is…”
“And answer for you?” interrupted Deep Thought majestically. ”Yes. I have.”
The two men shivered with expectancy. Their waiting had not been in vain.
“There really is one?” breathed Phouchg.
“There really is one,” confirmed Deep Thought.
“To Everything? To the great Question of Life, the Universe and Everything?”
“Yes.”
Both of the men had been trained for this moment, their lives had been a preparation for it, they had been selected at birth as those who would witness the answer, but even so they found themselves gasping and squirming like excited children.
“And you’re ready to give it to us?” urged Loonquawl.
“I am.”
“Now?”
“Now,” said Deep Thought.
They both licked their dry lips.
“Though I don’t think,” added Deep Thought, “that you’re going to like it.”
“Doesn’t matter!” said Phouchg. ”We must know it! Now!”
“Now?” inquired Deep Thought.
“Yes! Now…”
“Alright,” said the computer and settled into silence again. The two men fidgeted. The tension was unbearable.
“You’re really not going to like it,” observed Deep Though.
“Tell us!
“Alright,” said Deep Thought. ”The Answer to the Great Question…”
“Yes…!”
“Of Life, the Universe and Everything…” said Deep Thought.
“Yes…!”
“Is…” said Deep Thought, and paused.
“Yes…!
“Is…”
“Yes…!!!…?”
“Forty-two,” said Deep Though, with infinite majesty and calm.
—-
“You mean that’s it?” said Ford.
“That’s it.”
“Six by nine. Forty-two.”
“That’s it. That’s all there is.”
Douglas Adams referring to Ford Prefect, Life, The Universe and Everything
Ford Prefect, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy
