Bill Bryson Quotes

168 Sourced Quotes

English is full of booby traps for the unwary foreigner. Any language where the unassuming word fly signifies an annoying insect, a means of travel, and a critical part of a gentleman's apparel is clearly asking to be mangled.

Bill Bryson
Atoms are fickle and their time of devotion is fleeting - fleeting indeed. Even a long human life adds up to only about 650,000 hours. And when that modest milestone flashes past, or at some other point thereabouts, for reasons unknown your atoms will shut you down, silently disassemble, and go off to be other things.

Bill Bryson
Open your refrigerator door, and you summon forth more light than the total amount enjoyed by most households in the 18th century. The world at night, for much of history, was a very dark place indeed.

Bill Bryson
Four times I was honked at for having the temerity to proceed through town without the benefit of metal.

Bill Bryson
To my surprise, I felt a certain springy keenness. I was ready to hike. I had waited months for this day, after all, even if it had been mostly with foreboding. I wanted to see what was out there. All over America today people would be dragging themselves to work, stuck in traffic jams, wreathed in exhaust smoke. I was going for a walk in the woods. I was more than ready for this.

Bill Bryson
My mother only ever said two things. She said,'I don't know, dear.'And she said,'Can I get you a sandwich, honey?

Bill Bryson
I have a small tattered clipping that I sometimes carry with meand pull out for purposes of privateamusement. It's a weather forecast from theWestern Daily Mail and it says, in toto: 'Outlook: Dry and warm, but cooler with some rain.

Bill Bryson
When I was growing up I used to think that the best thing about coming from Des Moines was that it meant you didn't come from anywhere else in Iowa. By Iowa standards, Des Moines is a mecca of cosmopolitanism, a dynamic hub of wealth and education, where people wear three-piece suits and dark socks, often simultaneously.

Bill Bryson
Every kid I knew had a father with a little stash of men's magazines which the father thought was secret and which the kid knew all about.

Bill Bryson
Hardly anyone ever leaves. This is because Des Moines is the most powerful hypnotic known to man. Outside town there is a big sign that says, WELCOME TO DES MOINES. THIS IS WHAT DEATH IS LIKE. There isn't really. I just made that up. But the place does get a grip on you.

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
If a potato can produce vitamin C, why can't we? Within the animal kingdom only humans and guinea pigs are unable to synthesize vitamin C in their own bodies. Why us and guinea pigs? No point asking. Nobody knows.

Bill Bryson
Entirely incidentally, a little-known fact about Shakespeare is that his father moved to Stratford-upon-Avon from a nearby village shortly before his son's birth. Had he not done so, the Bard of Avon would instead be known as the rather less ringing Bard of Snitterfield.

Bill Bryson
It is always quietly thrilling to find yourself looking at a world you know well but have never seen from such an angle before.

Bill Bryson
I think it's only right that crazy people should have their own city, but I cannot for the life of me see why a sane person would want to go there.

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

Bill Bryson
Finally, this being America, there is the constant possibility of murder.

Bill Bryson
It sometimes occurs to me that the British have more heritage than isgood for them.

Bill Bryson