This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

If everyone knew exactly what I was going to say, then there would be no point in my saying it, would there?

I only know as much about myself as my mind can work out under its current conditions. And its current conditions are not good.

Ballycumber (ba-li-KUM-ber) n. One of the six half-read books lying somewhere in your bed.

Nobleness was one word for making a fuss about the trivial inevitabilities of life, but there were others.

I'd far rather be happy than right any day.

Was there a reason behind it? There would be no point in asking Zaphod, he never appeared to have a reason for anything he did at all: he had turned unfathomability into an art form. He attacked everything in life with a mixture of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence and it was often difficult to tell which was which.