Bill Bryson Quotes - Page 6

Quotes about:

• If you go out on the Appalachian Trail, you have to bring so much more equipment - a tent, sleeping bag - but if you go hiking in England, or Europe, generally, towns and villages are near enough together at the end of the day you can always go to a nice little inn and have a hot bath and something to drink.

  Bill Bryson

  Nice, Sleep, Europe

  6 Copy quote

• English grammar is so complex and confusing for the one very simple reason that its rules and terminology are based on Latin - a language with which it has precious little in common. In Latin, to take one example, it is not possible to split an infinitive. So in English, the early authorities decided, it should not be possible to split an infinitive either. But there is no reason why we shouldn't, any more than we should forsake instant coffee and air travel because they weren't available to the Romans.

  Bill Bryson

  Latin, Coffee, Writing

  16 Copy quote

• You don't have to know anything about baseball to respond to Babe Ruth because he's just this magnificent human being. And a really good story because he was this kid who grew up essentially as an orphan, you know, had a tough life, and then he became the most successful baseball player ever. But he was also a really good guy.

  Bill Bryson

  Baseball, Kids, Successful

  5 Copy quote

• For a long time, I'd been vaguely fascinated by the idea that Charles Lindbergh flew the Atlantic and Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs in the same summer.

  Bill Bryson

  Summer, Running, Home

  "Bill Bryson changes course for 'One Summer'". Interview with Todd Leopold, www.cnn.com. October 28, 2013.

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• I hadn't realized quite how extraordinary Charles Lindbergh's achievement was in flying the Atlantic alone. He had never flown over open water before, but he flew straight to Dingle Bay in Ireland and then on to Paris, exactly as planned.

  Bill Bryson

  Paris, Water, Achievement

  8 Copy quote

• When you sit in a chair, you are not actually sitting there, but levitating above it at a height of one angstrom (a hundred millionth of a centimetre), your electrons and its electrons implacably opposed to any closer intimacy.

  Bill Bryson

  Sitting, Height, Intimacy

  7 Copy quote

• If you drive to, say, Shenandoah National Park, or the Great Smoky Mountains, you'll get some appreciation for the scale and beauty of the outdoors. When you walk into it, then you see it in a completely different way. You discover it in a much slower, more majestic sort of way.

  Bill Bryson

  Gratitude, Appreciation, Mountain

  6 Copy quote

• I'm not a natural story-teller. Put a keyboard in front of me and I'm fine, but stand me up in front of an audience and I'm actually quite shy and reserved.

  Bill Bryson

  Shy, Stories, Keyboards

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• To an American the whole purpose of living, the one constant confirmation of continued existence, is to cram as much as sensual pleasure as possible into one's mouth more or less continuously. Gratification, instant and lavish, is a birthright

  Bill Bryson

  Sensual, Purpose, Mouths

  Bill Bryson (2000). “The Complete Notes”, Random House

  7 Copy quote

• Everything that has ever lived, plant or animal, dates its beginning from the same primordial twitch. At some point in an unimaginably distant past, some little bag of chemicals fidgeted to life. It absorbed some nutrients, gently pulsed, had a brief existence. This much may have happened many times before. But this ancestral packet did something additional and extraordinary. It cleaved itself and produced an heir. A tiny bundle of genetic material passed from one living entity to another, and has never stopped moving since. It was the moment of creation for us all.

  Bill Bryson

  Moving, Animal, Past

  Bill Bryson (2014). “A Short History of Nearly Everything”, p.269, Lulu Press, Inc

  4 Copy quote

• Coming back to your native land after an absence of many years is a surprisingly unsettling business, a little like waking from a long coma. Time, you discover, has wrought changes that leave you feeling mildly foolish and out of touch.

  Bill Bryson

  Years, Land, Long

  4 Copy quote

• You don't need a science degree to understand about science. You just need to think about it.

  Bill Bryson

  Science, Thinking, Understanding

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• 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

  Powerful, Men, Doe

  Bill Bryson (1989). “The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-town America”, p.3, VNR AG

  5 Copy quote

• I love the feeling of being anonymous in a city I've never been before.

  Bill Bryson

  Travel, Cities, Feelings

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• Absolute brain size does not tell you everything or possibly sometimes even much. Elephants and whales both have brains larger than ours, but you wouldn't have much trouble outwitting them in contract negotiations.

  Bill Bryson

  Whales, Elephants, Brain

  Bill Bryson (2014). “A Short History of Nearly Everything”, p.443, Lulu Press, Inc

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• Because time moves more slowly in Kid World ... it goes on for decades ... It is adult life that is over in a twinkling.

  Bill Bryson

  Moving, Kids, Adults

  4 Copy quote

• There is more difference between a zebra and a horse, or between a dolphin and a porpoise, than there is between you and the furry creatures your distant ancestors left behind when they set out to take over the world.

  Bill Bryson

  Horse, Zebras, Differences

  Bill Bryson (2014). “A Short History of Nearly Everything”, p.412, Lulu Press, Inc

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• I had to drive to Minneapolis once, and went on a back road just to see the country. But there was nothing to see. It's just flat and hot, and full of corn and soybeans and hogs. Every once in a while you come across a farm or some dead little town where the liveliest thing is the flies.

  Bill Bryson

  Country, Soybeans, Littles

  Bill Bryson (1989). “The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-town America”, p.5, VNR AG

  5 Copy quote

• 99.99 percent of all species that have ever lived are no longer with us.

  Bill Bryson

  Species, Percent

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• To me, the greatest invention of my lifetime is the laptop computer and the fact that I can be working on a book and be in an airport lounge, in a hotel room, and continue working; I fire up my laptop, and I'm in exactly the same place I was when I left home - that, to me, is a miracle.

  Bill Bryson

  Book, Home, Fire

  4 Copy quote

• At a conference of sociologists in America in 1977, love was defined as "the cognitive-affective state characterized by intrusive and obsessive fantasizing concerning reciprocity of amorant feelings by the object of the amorance." That is jargon - the practice of never calling a spade a spade when you might instead call it a manual earth-restructuring implement - and it is one of the great curses of modern English.

  Bill Bryson

  Practice, America, Feelings

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• Think of a single problem confronting the world today. Disease, poverty, global warming... If the problem is going to be solved, it is science that is going to solve it. Scientists tend to be unappreciated in the world at large, but you can hardly overstate the importance of the work they do. If anyone ever cures cancer, it will be a guy with a science degree. Or a woman with a science degree.

  Bill Bryson

  Cancer, Science, Thinking

  8 Copy quote

• The great failure in education, much of the time, is the lack of excitement and stimulus

  Bill Bryson

  Excitement, Stimulus

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• It was the kind of pure, undiffused light that can only come from a really hot blue sky, the kind that makes even a concrete highway painful to behold and turns every distant reflective surface into a little glint of flame. Do you know how sometimes on very fine days the sun will shine with a particular intensity that makes the most mundane objects in the landscape glow with an unusual radiance, so that buildings and structures you normally pass without a glance suddenly become arresting, even beautiful? Well, they seem to have that light in Australia nearly all the time.

  Bill Bryson

  Beautiful, Australia, Light

  8 Copy quote

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

  Bill Bryson

  Heritage, Sometimes, British

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