Beauty doesn’t have to be about anything. What’s a vase about? What’s a sunset or a flower about? What, for that matter, is Mozart’s Twenty-third Piano Concerto about?

“Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.” 

“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.” 

“Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?” 

“He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” 

“I'd far rather be happy than right any day.” 

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

Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

“I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.” 

“Reality is frequently inaccurate.” 

“There are some people you like immediately, some whom you think you might learn to like in the fullness of time, and some that you simply want to push away from you with a sharp stick.” 

“This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.” 

“Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.” 

“Don't you understand that we need to be childish in order to understand? Only a child sees things with perfect clarity, because it hasn't developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things that we don't expect to see.” 

“There is no point in using the word 'impossible' to describe something that has clearly happened.” 

“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.” 

“We can't win against obsession. They care, we don't. They win.” 

“All you really need to know for the moment is that the universe is a lot more complicated than you might think, even if you start from a position of thinking it's pretty damn complicated in the first place.” 

“Did I do anything wrong today," he said, "or has the world always been like this and I've been too wrapped up in myself to notice?” 

“Don't believe anything you read on the net. Except this. Well, including this, I suppose.” 

“Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.” 

“This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.” 

“In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.” 

“It can be very dangerous to see things from somebody else's point of view without the proper training.” 

“A life that is burdened with expectations is a heavy life. Its fruit is sorrow and disappointment.” 

“The quality of any advice anybody has to offer has to be judged against the quality of life they actually lead.” 

“Words used carelessly, as if they did not matter in any serious way, often allowed otherwise well-guarded truths to seep through.” 

“Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied.” 

“Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.” 

“Anything that thinks logically can be fooled by something else that thinks at least as logically as it does.” 

“I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.” 

“People who need to bully you are the easiest to push around.” 

“Can't stand all these poisonous creatures, all these snakes and insects and fish and things. Wretched things, biting everybody. And then people expect me to tell them what to do about it. I'll tell them what to do. Don't get bitten in the first place. (quoting Dr. Struan Sutherland)” 

“Yes, it is true that sometimes unusually intelligent and sensitive children can appear to be stupid. But stupid children can sometimes appear to be stupid as well. I think that's something you might have to consider.” 

“Why?' is always the most difficult question to answer. You know where you are when someone asks you 'What's the time?' or 'When was the battle of 1066?' or 'How do these seatbelts work that go tight when you slam the brakes on, Daddy?' The answers are easy and are, respectively, 'Seven-thirty in the evening,' 'Ten-fifteen in the morning,' and 'Don't ask stupid questions.” 

“Having not said anything the first time, it was somehow even more difficult to broach the subject the second time around.” 

“The idea was fantastically, wildly improbable. But like most fantastically, wildly improbable ideas it was at least as worthy of consideration as a more mundane one to which the facts had been strenuously bent to fit.” 

“Rather than arriving five hours late and flustered, it would be better all around if he were to arrive five hours and a few extra minutes late, but triumphantly in command.” 

He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.

The impossible often has a kind of integrity which the merely improbable lacks.

It is a rare mind indeed that can render the hitherto non-existent blindingly obvious. The cry 'I could have thought of that' is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn't, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too.

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at and repair.

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

If somebody thinks they're a hedgehog, presumably you just give 'em a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.

If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.

The difficulty with this conversation is that it's very different from most of the ones I've had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees.

We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can't cope with is therefore your own problem.

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

In order to fly, all one must do is simply miss the ground.