It takes a long time before we really get to grips with this [Darwin's 'On the Origin of Species'] and begin to understand it, because not only does it seem incredible and thoroughly demeaning to us, but it's yet another shock to our system to discover that not only are we not the centre of the Universe and we're not made by anything, but we started out as some kind of slime and got to where we are via being a monkey. It just doesn't read well.

To boldly split infinitives that no man had split before.

It was one of those pictures that children are supposed to like but don't. Full of endearing little animals doing endearing things, you know?

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

Anything invented before your fifteenth birthday is the order of nature. That's how it should be. Anything invented between your th and th birthday is new and exciting, and you might get a career there. Anything invented after that day, however, is against nature and should be prohibited.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.

I've never understood all this fuss people make about the dawn. I've seen a few and they're never as good as the photographs, which have the additional advantage of being things you can look at when you're in the right frame of mind, which is usually around lunchtime.