“Ariadne made an impression on you, and that's great. But life is not literature. Sooner or later, the spell wears off, the romantic feelings disappear, and you're left watching somebody's body disi...”

“The importance of humor is primarily to puncture fixed ideasto make us step back and realize that our situation, whatever it may be, is, in the grand scheme of things, always contingent and arbitra...”

“Theres no escaping it, hed been fond of telling us when he was well, the way you look defines who you are. You might argue for your soul, or your heart, but everyone else in the world will judge yo...”

“The stories we read in books, what's presented to us as being interesting - they have very little to do with real life as it's lived today. I'm not talking about straight-up escapism, your vampires...”

“None of it made any difference. The hollow feeling refused to go away. The next days were very hard. I found myself in the grip of a crippling ennui. I was back at square one, but I couldnt bring m...”

“I saw myself as reviving a certain mode of life, a mode that had been almost lost: the contemplative life of the country gentleman, in harmony with his status and history. In Renaissance times they...”

“Our market-intensive societies measure material progress by the increase in the volume and variety of commodities produced. And taking our cue from this sector, we measure social progress by the di...”

“In a world where women are commodities, a woman who refuses to sell herself will have the thing she refuses to sell taken away from her by force”

“Life is a precious commodity, Charles. It’s time you achieved your full potential and learned the true value of things.” “You’re talking like a Stalinist!” I cried. “People don’t get jobs to achiev...”

“So the hours are pretty good then?' he resumed.The Vogon stared down at him as sluggish thoughts moiled around in the murky depths.Yeah,' he said, 'but now you come to mention it, most of the actua...”

“Ninety percent of paid work is time-wasting crap. The world gets by on the other ten.”

“His introduction throws me. The only time I can envision "Hi, I'm a surgeon" as a fitting introduction is if I were on a gurney in a stark white room and a man wielding a scalpel was standing over ...”

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”

“If I am going to be drownedif I am going to be drownedif I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and t...”

“I'm an Earth ecstatic, and my creed is simple: All life is sacred, life loves life, and we are capable of improving our behavior toward one another. As basic as that is, for me it's also tonic and ...”