I thought you must be dead...
he said simply.
So did I for a while,
said Ford, and then I decided I was a lemon for a couple of weeks. I kept myself amused all that time jumping in and out of a gin and tonic.
Arthur cleared his throat, and then did it again. Where,
he said, did you...?
Find a gin and tonic?
said Ford brightly. I found a small lake that thought it was a gin and tonic, and jumped in and out of that. At least, I think it thought it was a gin and tonic.
...
The point is, you see,
said Ford, that there is no point in driving yourself mad trying to stop yourself going mad. You might just as well give in and save your sanity for later.
...
I took up being cruel to animals,
he said airily. But only,
he added, as a hobby.
... I won't disturb you with the details because they would...
What?
Disturb you. But you may be interested to know that I am single-handedly responsible for the evolved shape of the animal you came to know in later centuries as a giraffe....
...
An S.E.P.,
he said, is something that we can't see, or don't see, or our brain doesn't let us see, because we think that it's somebody else's problem. That's what S.E.P. means. Somebody Else's Problem. The brain just edits it out; it's like a blind spot. If you look at it directly you won't see it unless you know precisely what it is. Your only hope is to catch it by surprise out of the corner of your eye.
...
My doctor says that I have a malformed public duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fiber,
he muttered to himself, and that I am therefore excused from saving Universes.
...
I gave a speech once,
he said suddenly and apparently unconnectedly. You may not instantly see why I bring the subject up, but that is because my mind works so phenomenally fast, and I am at a rough estimate thirty billion times more intelligent than you. Let me give you an example. Think of a number, any number.
Er, five,
said the mattress.
Wrong,
said Marvin. You see?
...
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has this to say on the subject of flying.
There is an art, it says, or, rather, a knack to flying.
The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
Pick a nice day, it suggests, and try it.
The first part is easy.
All it requires is simply the ability to throw yourself forward with all your weight, and the willingness not to mind that it's going to hurt.
That is, it's going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground.
Most people fail to miss the ground, and if they are really trying properly, the likelihood is that they will fail to miss it fairly hard.
Clearly, it is the second part, the missing, which presents the difficulties.
One problem is that you have to miss the ground accidentally. It's no good deliberately intending to miss the ground because you won't. You have to have your attention suddenly distracted by something else when you're halfway there, so that you are no longer thinking about falling, or about the ground, or about how much it's going to hurt if you fail to miss it.
...
He was alone with his thoughts. They were extremely unpleasant thoughts and he would rather have had a chaperon.
...
It was the product of a mind that was not merely twisted, but actually sprained.
