The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.

the best writers, I think, don’t forget. They carry that childlike lunacy with them forever, its joy and its danger, and Hitchhiker’s is packed with that unique energy,

Its crew of four were ill at ease knowing that they had been brought together not of their own volition or by simple coincidence, but by some curious perversion of physics – as if relationships between people were susceptible to the same laws that governed the relationships between atoms and molecules.

All kids invent stories. They imagine games of War, or Doctor Who and the Daleks, or the wonderful logic of Off Ground Touch. But then hormones and kissing and spots take over,

Only six people in the Galaxy knew that the job of the Galactic President was not to wield power but to attract attention away from it.

‘The argument goes something like this: “I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”

‘We are going deep into the bowels of the planet where even now our race is being revived from its five-million-year slumber. Magrathea awakes.’

‘On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.’

‘you’d just have to program it to say What? and I don’t understand and Where’s the tea? – who’d know the difference?’