Quotes About Identity

No one really knows what mattresses are meant to gain from their lives either. They are large, friendly, pocket-sprung creatures that live quiet private lives in the marshes of Sqornshellous Zeta. Many of them get caught, slaughtered, dried out, shipped out and slept on. None of them seems to mind this and all of them are called Zem.

You ARE Zaphod Beeblebrox?' 'Yeah,' said Zaphod, 'but don't shout it out or they'll all want one.' 'THE Zaphod Beeblebrox?' 'No, just A Zaphod Beeblebrox, didn't you hear I come in six packs?' 'But sir,' it squealed, 'I just heard on the sub-ether radio report. It said you were dead...' 'Yeah, that's right, I just haven't stopped moving yet.

The only person for whom the house was in any way special was Arthur Dent, and that was only because it happened to be the one he lived in.

No private detective looks like a private detective. That's one of the first rules of private detection. But if no private detective looks like a private detective, how does a private detective know what it is he's supposed not to look like? Seems to me there's a problem there.

Dirk Gently is the name under which I now trade. There are certain events in the past, I'm afraid, from which I would wish to disassociate myself. Absolutely, I know how you feel. Most of the fourteenth century, for instance, was pretty grim, agreed Reg earnestly.

Because Ford never learned to say his original name, his father eventually died of shame, which is still a terminal disease in some parts of the Galaxy.

Vell, Zaphod's just zis guy, you know?

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.

I wanted to join Footlights," he says. "I wanted to be a writer-performer like the Pythons. In fact I wanted to be John Cleese and it took me some time to realise that the job was in fact taken.

Hey, er ... said Zaphod, what's your name? The man looked at them doubtfully. I don't know. Why, do you think I should have one? It seems very odd to give a bundle of vague sensory perceptions a name.

I wonder who this ship belongs to anyway, said Arthur. Me, said Zaphod. No. Who it really belongs to. Really me, insisted Zaphod. Look, property is theft, right? Therefore theft is property. Therefore this ship is mine, okay?

If you took a couple of David Bowies and stuck one of the David Bowies on the top of the other David Bowie, then attached another David Bowie to the end of each of the arms of the upper of the first two David Bowies and wrapped the whole business up in a dirty beach robe you would then have something which didn't exactly look like John Watson, but which those who knew him would find hauntingly familiar. He

Yeah, I'm sure that's him, he would add when shown a picture of Gordon Way. I only wasn't sure at first because in the picture he's got his mouth closed.

Here's an interesting little notion. Did you realize that most people's lives are governed by telephone numbers?

I suppose you'll want to see the aliens now," he said. "Do you want me to sit in a corner and rust, or just fall apart where I'm standing?

There were so many different ways in which you were required to provide absolute proof of your identity these days that life could easily become extremely tiresome just from that factor alone, never mind the deeper existential problems of trying to function as a coherent consciousness in an epistemologically ambigiuous phyiscal universe.

Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is.

Well, there's probably a lot you don't know about me," said Arthur. "Come to mention it, there's probably a lot I don't know about me either.

Is that robot yours?" he said. "No," came a thin metallic voice from the crater, "I'm mine.

In fact I wanted to be John Cleese and it took me some time to realise that the job was in fact taken." At

If I ever meet myself," said Zaphod, "I'll hit myself so hard I won't know what's hit me.

Who am I? What is my purpose in life? Does it really, cosmically speaking, matter if I don't get up and go to work?

My name," he said, "is Slartibartfast." Arthur

A bit like a preying mantis that doesn't prey—a non-preying mantis if you like.