I just use my life story as a kind of device on which to hang comic observations. It's not my interest or… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
It is a curious feature of our existance that we come from a planet that is very good at promoting life but… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
“Bobcats—admittedly much smaller creatures than mountain lions—are known to exist in considerable numbers and yet are so shy and furtive that you… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
I mused for a few moments on the question of which was worse, to lead a life so boring that you are… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
Because time moves more slowly in Kid World ... it goes on for decades ... It is adult life that is over… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
“That is the great thing about being a foreigner—that you get to spend your life with a whole new set of cultural… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
“Life appears to have been pretty good for the Skara Brae residents. They had jewelry and pottery. They grew wheat and barley,… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
But what is life to a lichen ? Yet its impulse to exist, to be, is every bit as strong as ours… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
“As humans we are inclined to feel that life must have a point. We have plans and aspirations and desires. We want… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
Being a pessimist is just such a gloomy way of looking at things, so I have to hope for the best -… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
To an American the whole purpose of living, the one constant confirmation of continued existence, is to cram as much as sensual… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
You don't have to know anything about baseball to respond to Babe Ruth because he's just this magnificent human being. And a… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
“We are so used to the notion of our own inevitability as life’s dominant species that it is hard to grasp that… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
I've been writing all these books that have been largely autobiographical and yet, really, they don't tell you anything about me. I… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
Everything that has ever lived, plant or animal, dates its beginning from the same primordial twitch. At some point in an unimaginably… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
“But compared with much of the rest of the world, Europe is a beacon of enlightenment. Among the many amazing and depressing… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
“Take a moment from time to time to remember that you are alive. I know this sounds a trifle obvious, but it… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
“Oh, go on' you prod encouragingly. 'Well, just a small one then,' they say and dartingly take a small one, and then… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
So, if people didn’t settle down to take up farming, why then did they embark on this entirely new way of living?… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
“More recently, during a debate in the House of Lords in 1978 one of the members said: "If there is a more… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
“If you go back sixty-four generations, to the time of the Romans, the number of people on whose cooperative efforts your eventual… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
I once joked in a book that there are three things you can't do in life. You can't beat the phone company,… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
“The field attracted many extraordinary figures, not least the aforementioned Murchison, who spent the first thirty or so years of his life… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
“At depth, microbes shrink in size and become extremely sluggish. The liveliest of them may divide no more than once a century18,… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
“Of all the things I am not very good at, living in the real world is perhaps the most outstanding. I am… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life's… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
When you consider it from a human perspective, and clearly it would be difficult for us to do otherwise, life is an… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
Most big companies don't like you very much, except hotels, airlines and Microsoft, which don't like you at all. — Bill Bryson Copy Share
“But Welsh spellings are as nothing compared with Irish Gaelic, a language in which spelling and pronunciation give the impression of having been devised… — Bill Bryson Copy Share
“Pantaloons were often worn tight as paint and were not a great deal less revealing, particularly as they were worn without underwear. . .… — Bill Bryson Copy Share
If you go out on the Appalachian Trail, you have to bring so much more equipment - a tent, sleeping bag - but if… — Bill Bryson Copy Share
“The dining table was a plain board called by that name. It was hung on the wall when not in use, and was perched… — Bill Bryson Copy Share
“From almost nothing, France in four years built up an aircraft industry that employed nearly 200,000 people and produced some 70,000 planes. Britain built… — Bill Bryson Copy Share
“Every twenty minutes on the Appalachian Trail, Katz and I walked farther than the average American walks in a week. For 93 percent of… — Bill Bryson Copy Share
“A diarist named George Templeton Strong recorded in the winter of 1866 that even with two furnaces alight and all the fireplaces blazing, he… — Bill Bryson Copy Share
Tune your television to any channel it doesn't receive and about 1 percent of the dancing static you see is accounted for by this… — Bill Bryson Copy Share
As a rule of thumb, I would submit that if you need to call your floss provider, for any reason, you are probably not… — Bill Bryson Copy Share
Nobody gets excited about the future at all, ever. The future is something we find depressing and worrisome. — Bill Bryson Copy Share
“What made this particularly interesting is that John Howard is by far the dullest man in Australia. Imagine a very committed funeral home director… — Bill Bryson Copy Share
I would make a genuinely terrible guide. I can't remember things. I would get half way through telling a story or explaining something and… — Bill Bryson Copy Share
“In the mystifying world that was Victorian parenthood, obedience took precedence over all considerations of affection and happiness, and that odd, painful conviction remained… — Bill Bryson Copy Share
If this book has a lesson, it is that we are awfully lucky to be here-and by 'we' I mean every living thing. To… — Bill Bryson Copy Share
