Quotes Galore

  'The people of Krikkit,' said His High Judgemental Supremacy, Judiciary Pag, LIVR (the Learned, Impartial, and Very Relaxed), Chairman of the Board of Judges at the Krikkit War Crimes Trial, 'are, well, you know, they're just a bunch of real sweet guys, you know, who just happen to want to kill everybody. Hell, I feel the same way some mornings. Shit.'
  'OK,' he continued, swinging his feet up on to the bench in front of him and pausing a moment to pick a thread off his Ceremonial Beach
Loafers, ...
  '... so we won.' He paused and chewed a little gum. 'We won,' he repeated, 'but that's no big deal. I mean a medium sized galaxy against
one little world, and how long did it take us? Clerk of the court?'
  'M'lud?' said the severe little man in black, rising.
  'How long, kiddo?'
  'It is a trifle difficult, m'lud, to be precise in this matter. Time and distance...'
  'Relax, guy, be vague.'
  'I hardly like to be vague, m'lud, over such a...'
  'Bite the bullet and be it.'
  The clerk of the court blinked at him. It was clear that like most of the Galactic legal profession he found Judiciary Pag ... a rather
distressing figure. He was clearly a bounder and a cad. ...
(Ellipsis separated by spaces are mine.)


I've recently been reading the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (obviously called) trilogy again after some years. The only one I've never read is the fifth on, Mostly Harmless. That bothers me. Deep down in my heart I know that I'm not complete because of it.

Douglas Adams was a freakishly brilliant fellow, if his writing is anything to go by. I can't say anything about his moral fibre, or whether he had any, because I don't really know anything about him. But if you doubt the brilliance, just read chapter seven of Life, the universe and everything. Honestly, Bistromathics! And it's true. I got the opening quote from the same book, chapter 14.

What's really startled me as I've hacked and slashed my way through these books, again, is how much they may have subliminally affected my own writing. I don't write exactly as he does, but my thought patterns are very much like his. I'm almost disturbed to see it, and would be, if I wasn't so impressed with his freakish intelligence.

Thank you, Jessie, for introducing me to this series in the first place. That was long ago, while the earth was still young, in 1998. That was also the point where my own writing began to take its own shape.


(It should go without saying that any mention of the Guide must include a disclaimer: Please don't bother with the crap 2005 movie, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's an embarrassment to the books, which just don't transfer well to visual media. Note that I say this after having only watched five minutes of the movie in a theatre before getting up in disgust and going to another flick. This isn't book snobbery, though. The movie is awful.)