The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

I’ve just finished reading “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams and the book is totally amazing and hilarious! I won’t annoy you with a summary of the story, but I’ve collected my favourite quotes of the book and here are some of them:

“Would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?”

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

“Protect me from knowing what I don’t need to know. Protect me from even knowing that there are things to know that I don’t know. Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things that I decided not to know about. Amen.”

“Don’t panic.”

My favourite scene in the book is definitely the one when a computer called Deep Thought is asked the ultimate answer to “the life, the universe and everything”. The computer tells the people that it would take him 7.5 million years to find the solution. When these years finally passed the Day of the Answer is celebrated. Deep Thought is asked once again for the answer and the computer says “Forty-two!”. What an unsatisfactory reply... I was a little bit, let’s say upset. However, what Adams has written then is really thought-provoking – and does justice to Deep Thought’s name: The computer says that the problem with human beings is that they require answers for question they don’t know/define exactly.

Douglas Adams was asked many times why he chose the number 42 and this is his answer:

“The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought '42 will do'. I typed it out. End of story.“

The author died on May 11^th, 2001 and ever since then the Towel Day takes place on May 25^th. On this day, Adams’ fans carry a towel with them. The reason for this is that Douglas Adams writes in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy that a towel is “the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have”. This day is celebrated especially in Innsbruck, the city where Adams got his inspiration from to write his bestseller.