Bill Bryson Quotes

168 Sourced Quotes

And then suddenly I would realize that I couldn't remember, hadn't actually consciously experienced, any of the last forty-seven properties I had visited, and didn't know if I had left a paper or just walked up to the door, stood for a moment like an underfunctioning automaton, and turned around and walked away again. It is not easy to describe the sense of self-disappointment that comes with reaching the end of your route and finding that there are sixteen undelivered papers in your bag and you don't have the least idea—not the least idea—to whom they should have gone. I spent much of my prepubescent years first walking an enormous newspaper route, then revisiting large parts of it. Sometimes twice.

Bill Bryson
Three things alone are certain when you venture into a loft: that you will crack your head on a beam at least twice, that you will get cobwebs draped over your face, and that you will not find what you went looking for.

Bill Bryson
We couldn't place their accents but we thought the smaller one might be Australian since he seemed so at home down under.

Bill Bryson
There is always a little more toothpaste in the tube. Think about it.

Bill Bryson
Language, never forget, is more fashion than science, and matters of usage, spelling, and pronunciation tend to wander around like hemlines.

Bill Bryson
Beulah has a husband?' I know. It's a miracle. There can't be more than two people on the planet who'd be willing to sleep with her, and here we are both in the same town.

Bill Bryson
A friend Alan and I ended up in an Outback pub in a place called Daly Waters and apparently, he says, in the course of this very lively evening we spent there I offered to do a house swap with a family from Korea. We weren't sure whether they were from North Korea or South Korea.

Bill Bryson
The average Southerner has the speech patterns of someone slipping in and out of consciousness. I can change my shoes and socks faster than most people in Mississippi can speak a sentence.

Bill Bryson
Energy is liberated matter, matter is energy waiting to happen.

Bill Bryson
I love everything about motels. I can't help myself. I still get excited every time I slip a key into a motel room door and fling it open.

Bill Bryson
They [the American authorities] can't actually believe that anyone would want to not be an American," he says. "It's not enough to send them a letter and tell them you've become British; you've got to go to the embassy to formally renounce your US citizenship. I'm a little worried that when I do this they'll pack me off to Guantanamo.

Bill Bryson
Hunters will tell you that a moose is a wily and ferocious forest creature. Nonsense. A moose is a cow drawn by a three-year-old.

Bill Bryson
In my day, the principal concerns of university students were sex, smoking dope, rioting and learning. Learning was something you did only when the first three weren't available.

Bill Bryson
Romans park their cars the way I would park if I had just spilled a beaker of hydrochloric acid on my lap.

Bill Bryson
Everywhere throughout New England you find old, tumbledown field walls, often in the middle of the deepest, most settled- looking woods- a reminder of just how swiftly nature reclaims the land in America.

Bill Bryson
I can't think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything.

Bill Bryson
The remarkable position in which we find ourselves is that we don't actually know what we actually know.

Bill Bryson
The makers of sneakers also thoughtfully pocked the soles with numberless crevices, craters, chevrons, mazes, crop circles, and other rubbery hieroglyphs, so that when you stepped in a moist pile of dog shit, as you most assuredly did within three bounds of leaving the house, they provided additional absorbing hours of pastime while you cleaned them out with a stick, gagging quietly but oddly content.

Bill Bryson
Perhaps it's my natural pessimism, but it seems that an awfully large part of travel these days is to see things while you still can.

Bill Bryson
You can always tell a Midwestern couple in Europe because they will be standing on a traffic island in the middle of a busy intersection looking at a windblown map and arguing over which way is west. European cities, with their wandering streets and undisciplined alleys, drive Midwesterners practically insane.

Bill Bryson
I'd turn on the lights, but they're blown. I'd offer you a seat, but there isn't one. I'd offer you a drink from the minibar, but there doesn't appear to be one." "It certainly is basic." "Basic? It's a bloody cell!

Bill Bryson
A computer is a stupid machine with the ability to do incredibly smart things, while computer programmers are smart people with the ability to do incredibly stupid things. They are, in short, a dangerously perfect match.

Bill Bryson
When I awoke it was daylight. The inside of my tent was coated in a curious flaky rime, which I realized after a moment was all of my nighttime snores, condensed and frozen and pasted to the fabric, as if into a scrapbook of respiratory memories.

Bill Bryson
What this means in practice is that if you are not a born worrier you have nothing to worry about (though of course you wouldn't be worrying anyway), whereas if you are a worrier by nature there is absolutely nothing you can do about it, so you may as well stop worrying, except of course you can't.

Bill Bryson
Protons give an atom its identity, electrons its personality.

Bill Bryson