“The light works," he said, indicating the window, "the gravity works," he said, dropping a pencil on the floor. "Anything else we have to take our chances with.”

“We already have the Wooden Pillar, the Steel Pillar and the Plastic Pillar. In a moment we will have the Golden Bail....'No, you won't.'We will,' stated the robot simply.No, you won't. It makes my ship work.'In a moment,' repeated the robot patiently, 'we will have the Golden Bail....'You will not,' said Zaphod.And then we must go,' said the robot, in all seriousness, 'to a party.'Oh,' said Zaphod, startled, 'can I come?'No,' said the robot, 'we are going to shoot you.'Oh, yeah?' said Zaphod, waggling his gun.Yes,' said the robot, and they shot him.Zaphod was so surprised that they had to shoot him again before he fell down. (85-86)”

“Sir Isaac Newton, renowned inventor of the milled-edge coin and the catflap!""The what?" said Richard."The catflap! A device of the utmost cunning, perspicuity and invention. It is a door within a door, you see, a ...""Yes," said Richard, "there was also the small matter of gravity.""Gravity," said Dirk with a slightly dismissed shrug, "yes, there was that as well, I suppose. Though that, of course, was merely a discovery. It was there to be discovered." ... "You see?" he said dropping his cigarette butt, "They even keep it on at weekends. Someone was bound to notice sooner or later. But the catflap ... ah, there is a very different matter. Invention, pure creative invention. It is a door within a door, you see.”

“Ford!" he said, "there's an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they've worked out.”

“I asked him if he'd come to clean the windows and he said no he'd come to demolish the house. He didn't tell me straight away of course. Oh no. First he wiped a couple of windows and charged me a fiver. Then he told me.”

“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

“If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a non-working cat.”