Bill Bryson - Notes from a Small Island (1995)

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Blackpool's illuminations are nothing if not splendid, and they are not splendid.

Bill Bryson
I know this goes without saying, but Stonehenge really was the most incredible accomplishment. It took five hundred men just to pull each sarsen, plus a hundred more to dash around positioning the rollers. Just think about it for a minute. Can you imagine trying to talk six hundred people into helping you drag a fifty-ton stone eighteen miles across the countryside and muscle it into an upright position, and then saying, "Right, lads! Another twenty like that, plus some lintels and maybe a couple of dozen nice bluestones from Wales, and we can party!" Whoever was the person behind Stonehenge was one dickens of a motivator, I'll tell you that.

Bill Bryson
It is an interesting experience to become acquainted with a country through the eyes of the insane, and, if I may say, so a particularly useful grounding for life in Britain

Bill Bryson
And I find chopsticks frankly distressing. Am I alone in thinking it odd that a people ingenious enough to invent paper, gunpowder, kites and any number of other useful objects, and who have a noble history extending back 3,000 years haven't yet worked out that a pair of knitting needles is no way to capture food?

Bill Bryson
Why, it's a perfect little city. If you have never been to Durham, go there at once. Take my car. It's wonderful.

Bill Bryson
Why is it that women... find it so unsettling if you spend more than four minutes a day on the toilet?

Bill Bryson
Here are instructions for being a pigeon: 1. Walk around aimlessly for a while, pecking at cigarette butts and other inappropriate items. 2. Take fright at someone walking along the platform and fly off to a girder. 3. Have a shit.4. Repeat.

Bill Bryson
The tearoom lady called me love. All the shop ladies called me love and most of the men called me mate. I hadn't been here twelve hours and already they loved me.

Bill Bryson