I don't like the idea of missionaries. In fact, the whole business fills me with fear and alarm. I don't believe in God, or at least not in the one we've invented for ourselves in England to fulfill our peculiarly English needs, and certainly not in the ones they've invented in America who supply their servants with toupees, television stations and, most importantly, toll-free telephone numbers. I wish that people who did believe in such things would keep them to themselves and not export them to the developing world.

Lord, lord, lord. Protect me from the consequences of the above prayer.

I think that growing up in a crowded continent like Europe with an awful lot of competing claims, ideas, cultures, and systems of thought we have, perforce, developed a more sophisticated notion of what the word freedom means than I see much evidence of in America. To be frank, it sometimes seems that the American idea of freedom has more to do with my freedom to do what I want than your freedom to do what you want. I think that in Europe we're probably better at understanding how to balance those competing claims, though not a lot.

How can I tell," said the man, "that the past isn't a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind?

There are two things you should remember when dealing with parallel universes. One, they're not really parallel, and two, they're not really universes

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

Time is the worst place, so to speak, to get lost in, as Arthur Dent could testify, having been lost in both time and space a good deal. At least being lost in space kept you busy.