Words used carelessly, as if they did not matter in any serious way, often allowed otherwise well-guarded truths to seep through.

We talked about how easy it was to make the mistake of anthropomorphizing animals, and projecting our own feelings and perceptions on to them, where they were inappropriate and didn't fit. We simply had no idea what it was like being an extremely large lizard, and neither for that matter did the lizard, because it was not self-conscious about being an extremely large lizard, it just got on with the business of being one. To react with revulsion to its behavior was to make the mistake of applying criteria that are only appropriate to the business of being human.

The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double-backwards-somersault through a hoop whilst whistling the 'Star Spangled Banner', but in fact the message was this: So long and thanks for all the fish.

Will you stop counting!' snarled Zaphod. 'Yes,' said Ford Prefect, 'in three minutes and thirty-five seconds.

You know," said Arthur, "it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and 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." "Why, what did she tell you?" "I don't know, I didn't listen.

Imagine" he said, "never even thinking, 'We are alone,' simply because it has never occurred to you to think that there's any other way to be.

I'm 48, which is a bit of a shock to me. Why only last year I thought I was a precocious young thing!