The light works," he said, indicating the window, "the gravity works," he said, dropping a pencil on the floor. "Anything else we have to take our chances with.

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is.

ABOYNE (vb.) To beat an expert at a game of skill by playing so appallingly that none of his clever tactics or strategies are of any use to him.

Yes. They are the words that finally turned me into the hermit I have now become. It was quite sudden. I saw them, and I knew what I had to do." The sign read: "Hold stick near center of its length. Moisten pointed end in mouth. Insert in tooth space, blunt end next to gum. Use gentle in-out motion." "It seemed to me," said Wonko the Sane, "that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a package of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane.

But while nature has considerable resilience, there is a limit to how far that resilience can be stretched. No one knows how close to the limit we are getting. The darker it gets, the faster we're driving

'The difficulty with this conversation,' said Arthur after a sort of pondering look had crawled slowly across his face like a mountaineer negotiating a tricky outcrop, 'is that it's very different from most of the ones I've had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees.'

It's part of the shape of the Universe. I only have to talk to somebody and they begin to hate me.