Solutions nearly always come from the direction you least expect, which means there's no point trying to look in that direction because it won't be coming from there.

Having not said anything the first time, it was somehow even more difficult to broach the subject the second time around.

After a while he played with the pencil and the paper again and was delighted when he discovered how to make a mark with the one on the other. Various noises continued outside, but he didn't know whether they were real or not. He then talked to his table for a week to see how it would react.

I am terribly proud of-I was born in Cambridge in 1952 and my initials are DNA!

For seven and a half million years, Deep Thought computed and calculated, and in the end announced that the answer was in fact Forty-two - and so another, even bigger, computer had to be built to find out what the actual question was.

Earthmen are not proud of their ancestors and never invite them round to dinner.

In the center lay the exploded carcass of a lonely sperm whale that hadn't lived long enough to be disappointed with its lot.