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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

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If they don't keep exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working.

'All right', said Ford, 'just stop panicking!' 

'Who said anything about panicking?' snapped Arthur. 'This is still just the culture shock. You wait till I've settled down into the situation and found my bearings. Then I'll start panicking!'

i found this whole exchange quite sad even though it's funny (it represents our politicians)

“Zaphod,” she said patiently, “they were floating unprotected in open space … you wouldn’t want them to have died, would you?” “Well, you know … no. Not as such, but …” “Not as such? Not die as such? But?” Trillian cocked her head on one side. “A second later and they would have been dead.” “Yeah, so if you’d taken the trouble to think about the problem a bit longer it would have gone away.” “You’d have been happy to let them die?” “Well, you know, not happy as such, but …”

it's kinda brilliant tbh, still annoying though

One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn’t be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn’t understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid. He was renowned for being amazingly clever and quite clearly was so—but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence the act. He preferred people to be puzzled rather than contemptuous. This above all appeared to Trillian to be genuinely stupid, but she could no longer be bothered to argue about it.

“Shhh!” said Zaphod. “There’s absolutely nothing to be worried about.” “Then why’s everyone so tense?” “They’re just interested!” shouted Zaphod.

it's the subtle humor that i really like about this book

He gestured Arthur towards a chair which looked as if it had been made out of the ribcage of a stegosaurus.

"It was made out of the ribcage of a stegosaurus," explained the old man as he pottered about fishing bits of wire out from under tottering piles of paper and drawing instruments.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy quotes

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