Douglas Adams was great.
"Every country is like a particular type of person. America is like a belligerent adolescent boy, Canada is like an intelligent thirty-five-year-old woman. Ausfailia is like Jack Nicholson. It comes right up to you and laughs very hard in your face in a highly threatening and engaging manner. In fact it's not so much a country as such, more a sort of thin crust of semi-demented civilisation caked around the edge of a vast, raw wilderness, full of heat and dust and hopping things."
About Britain sending criminals to Ausfailia for punishment in days gone by:
"I spent a good half hour enjoying this single piece of information. It was wonderful. There we British sat, poor grey sodden creatures huddling under our grey northern sky that seeped like a rancid dish cloth, busy sending those we wished to punish most severely to sit in bright sunlight on the coast of the Tasman Sea at the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef and maybe do some surfing too. No wonder the Australians have a particular kind of smile that they reserve exclusively for use on the British."
About the hotel in Australia:
"Our favorite item was the balcony that overlooked the sea, because it had an awning that could be lowered into place by pressing an electric switch. The switch had two settings. You could set it to AUTO, in which case it would open up when the sun came out, or MANUAL, in which case, we assumed, a small incompetent Spanish waiter came and did it for you. We thought this was terribly funny and laughed and laughed and laughed and had some more champagne and laughed some more."
Still about the hotel:
"We were woken at precisely seven-thirty the following morning and indeed every morning by a seagull that perched on our balcony and our regular early-morning wake-up screech."
About technology:
"I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
1. Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that is invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things."
About people contacting him:
"What are the benefits of speaking to your fans via email?
It's quicker, easier, and involves less licking."
About time travel:
"Time travel? I believe there are people regularly travelling back from the future and interfering with our lives on a daily basis. The evidence is all around us. I'm talking about how every time we make an insurance claim we discover that somehow mysteriously the exact thing we are claiming for is now precisely excluded from our policy."
About something else entirely:
"Present someone with a questionnaire clipboard and they lie. A friend of mine once had a job preparing a questionnaire for people to fill out on the web. He said the information they got back was enormously heartening about the state of the world. For instance, did you know that almost 90% of the population are CEOs of their own companies and earn over a million dollars a year?"
From a short story on Genghis Kahn:
"The greatest of the Asian warlords, he stood alone, revered as a god among warriors, marked out by the cold light of his grey-green eyes, the savage furrow of his brow, and the fact that he could beat the s**t out of any of them."
"The warrior hurled his torch onto the still-glowing fire, and then threw the dog onto it. That would teach it to be a dog. ... ... ... ... ... When he was satisfied with it, he heaved a heavy sigh and sat back in front of the fire on which the dog was now blazing merrily."
From a book that was never finished:
"There is a particular disdain with which Siamese cats regard you. Anyone who has accidentally walked in on the Queen cleaning her teeth will be familiar with this feeling."
Abunay Community Member 
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