blearily,

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.

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

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

‘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.’

‘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.”

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.

Maybe eBooks are going to take over, one day, but not until those whizzkids in Silicon Valley invent a way to bend the corners, fold the spine, yellow the pages, add a coffee ring or two and allow the plastic tablet to fall open at a favourite page.

‘What do you mean, why’s it got to be built?’ he said. ‘It’s a bypass. You’ve got to build bypasses.’