The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.

"Er..." Zarquon said, "hello. Er, look, I'm sorry I'm a bit late. I've had the most ghastly time, all sorts of things cropping up at the last moment."
He seemed nervous of the expectant awed hush. He cleared his throat.
"Er, how are we for time?" he said, "have I just got a min—"
And so the Universe ended.

"Excuse me," Arthur said, "the Ashes. I've got them. They were stolen by those white robots a moment ago ... what should I do with them?"
The policeman told him, but Arthur could only assume that he was speaking metaphorically.

Moin.
Fliegen geht so: auf den Boden werfen, aber daneben.
Hey. Flying works like this: throw yourself at the ground, but miss.

For a being of light, gazing even for a moment into the heart of dark space has an effect equivalent to a dozen near-death experiences. It's the Universe's way of telling you to get on with your life. Which is a good thing if the feeling budding in a person's heart is a good feeling.

“Funny,” he intoned funereally, “how just when you think life can’t possibly get any worse it suddenly does.”

"What's up?"
"I don't know," said Marvin, "I've never been there."

"Forty-two," said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm...

Der Computer, der die Frage zur Antwort 42 liefern sollte, sollte dafür 10 Millionen Jahre brauchen. Wie viel Zeit davon ist denn inzwischen vergangen? Ich frage einfach mal unverfänglich.

Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity—distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless.

"Life," said Marvin dolefully, "loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it."

Marvin droned,
Now the world has gone to bed,
Darkness don't engulf my head,
I can see by infrared,
How I hate the night.
He paused to gather artistic and emotional strength to tackle the next verse.
Now I lay me down to sleep,
Try to count electric sheep,
Sweet dream wishes you can keep,
How I hate the night.

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."
- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy"

Such generators were often used to break the ice at parties by making all the molecules in the hostess's undergarments leap simultaneously one foot to the left, in accordance with the Theory of Indeterminacy. Many respectable physicists said that they weren't going to stand for this, partly because it was a debasement of science, but mostly because they didn't get invited to those sorts of parties.

The sign said:
Hold stick near centre of its length. Moisten pointed end in mouth. Insert in tooth space, blunt end next to gum. Use gentle in-out motion.
"It seemed to me," said Wonko the Sane, "that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a packet of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane."

Several billion trillion tons of superhot exploding hydrogen nuclei rose slowly above the horizon and managed to look small, cold and slightly damp.

If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot right now.

"This Arthur Dent," comes the cry from the furthest reaches of the galaxy, and has even now been found inscribed on a mysterious deep space probe thought to originate from an alien galaxy at a distance too hideous to contemplate, "what is he, man or mouse? Is he interested in nothing more than tea and the wider issues of life? Has he no spirit? has he no passion? Does he not, to put it in a nutshell, fuck?"

"Share and Enjoy" is the company motto of the hugely successful Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Complaints division, which now covers the major land masses of three medium sized planets and is the only part of the Corporation to have shown a consistent profit in recent years.