Exactly!" said Deep Thought. "So once you do know what the question actually is, you'll know what the answer means.

He would have felt safe if alongside the Dentrassis' underwear, the piles of Sqornshellous mattresses and the man from Betelgeuse holding up a small yellow fish and offering to put it in his ear he had been able to see just a small packet of cornflakes. But he couldn't, and he didn't feel safe.

He didn't know why he had become president of the galaxy, except that it seemed a fun thing to be.

The only person for whom the house was in any way special was Arthur Dent, and that was only because it happened to be the one he lived in.

No one really knows what mattresses are meant to gain from their lives either. They are large, friendly, pocket-sprung creatures that live quiet private lives in the marshes of Sqornshellous Zeta. Many of them get caught, slaughtered, dried out, shipped out and slept on. None of them seems to mind this and all of them are called Zem.

Exactly!" said Deep Thought. "So once you do know what the question actually is, you'll know what the answer means.

He learned to communicate with birds and discovered their conversation was fantastically boring. It was all to do with windspeed, wingspans, power-to-weight ratios and a fair bit about berries.