...and it occurred to me, with the forcefulness of a thought experienced in 360 degrees, that that's really what history mostly is:… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
I'm not funny in person. I mean I'm really not. I'm one of those people who always screw up anecdotes. — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
Traveling makes you realize what an immeasurably nice place much of America could be if only people possessed the same instinct for… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
I think it's only right that crazy people should have their own city, but I cannot for the life of me see… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
I painted myself into a corner by writing a whole book on this one period. The summer of 1927 came to an… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
There are three stages in scientific discovery. First, people deny that it is true, then they deny that it is important; finally… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
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… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
I can wear a baseball cap; I am entitled to wear a baseball cap. I am genetically pre-disposed to wear a baseball… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
People don't talk like this, theytalklikethis. Syllables, words, sentences run together like a watercolour left in the rain. To understand what anyone… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
It was an odd situation. For a century and a half, men got rid of their own hair, which was perfectly comfortable,… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
I often feel I'm a disappointment to people because they expect me to be the guy in the books. When I sit… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
It is not as if farming brought a great improvement in living standards either. A typical hunter-gatherer enjoyed a more varied diet… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
The number of people on whose cooperative efforts your eventual existence depends has risen to approximately 1,000,000,000,000,000,000, which is several thousand times… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
For a long time it puzzled me how something so expensive, so leading edge, could be so useless. And then it occurred… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
I always tell people there's only one trick to writing: You have to write something that people are willing to pay money… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
I don't know whether I'm misanthropic. It seems to me I'm constantly disappointed. I'm very easily disappointed. Disappointed in the things that… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
But that's the glory of foreign travel, as far as I am concerned. I don't want to know what people are talking… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
“Every atom you possess has almost certainly passed through several stars and been part of millions of organisms on its way to… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
But I got a great deal else from the experience. I learned to pitch a tent and sleep beneath the stars. For… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
It isn't easy to become a fossil. ... Only about one bone in a billion, it is thought, becomes fossilized. If that… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
Suddenly, in the space of a moment, I realized what it was that I loved about Britain--which is to say, all of… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
Why is it, I wondered, that old people are always so self-centered and excitable? But I just smiled benignly and stood back,… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
More than 300 million people in the world speak English and the rest, it sometimes seems, try to. — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
Making English grammar conform to Latin rules is like asking people to play baseball using the rules of football. — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
In any area of human endeavour, there is going to be mediocrity. You're going to find people who get money that they… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
And I find chopsticks frankly distressing. Am I alone in thinking it odd that a people ingenious enough to invent paper, gunpowder,… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
When I was growing up I used to think that the best thing about coming from Des Moines was that it meant… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
The average Southerner has the speech patterns of someone slipping in and out of consciousness. I can change my shoes and socks… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
You may find that your parents are the most delightful people, but you don't want to live with them. — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
I have long known that it is part of God's plan for me to spend a little time with each of the… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
The people are immensely likable— cheerful, extrovert, quick-witted, and unfailingly obliging. Their cities are safe and clean and nearly always built on… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
Those who sniff decay in every shift of sense or alteration of usage do the language no service. Too often for such… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
Even though sugar was very expensive, people consumed it till their teeth turned black, and if their teeth didn't turn black naturally,… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
To my surprise, I felt a certain springy keenness. I was ready to hike. I had waited months for this day, after… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
As James Surowiecki noted in a New Yorker article, given a choice between developing antibiotics that people will take every day for… — 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
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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
Nobody gets excited about the future at all, ever. The future is something we find depressing and worrisome. — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
“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 Image
