I would make a genuinely terrible guide. I can't remember things. I would get half way through telling a story or explaining… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
If this book has a lesson, it is that we are awfully lucky to be here-and by 'we' I mean every living… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
Disassemble the cells of a sponge (by passing them through a sieve, for instance), then dump them into a solution, and they… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
Australians are very unfair in this way. They spend half of any conversation insisting that the country's dangers are vastly overrated and… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
One of the brilliant things about Britain is the way you've managed to save old things but to keep using them -… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
If you drive to, say, Shenandoah National Park, or the Great Smoky Mountains, you'll get some appreciation for the scale and beauty… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
You can always tell a Midwestern couple in Europe because they will be standing on a traffic island in the middle of… — 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
I have made a career of bumbling around places, stumbling on landmarks and generally being quite haphazard and shambolic about the way… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
Romans park their cars the way I would park if I had just spilled a beaker of hydrochloric acid on my lap. — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
Most scientists are without exception adorably quirky, and one of the ways of making it more accessible was to try to get… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
It is not true that the English invented cricket as a way of making all other human endeavors look interesting and lively;… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
In a funny way, nothing makes you feel more like a native of your own country than to live where nearly everyone… — 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
Our instinct may be to see the impossibility of tracking everything down as frustrating, dispiriting, perhaps even appalling, but it can just… — 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
I can't fix the world. If you want to make a difference in life, you have to direct your energies in a… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
In order to have quality journalism you need to have a good income stream, and no Internet model has produced a way… — 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
I could give you a long list of things I like about Britain, but essentially what it comes down to is that… — 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
An awful lot of England is slowly eroding, in ways that I find really distressing, and an awful lot of it is… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
Distance changes utterly when you take the world on foot. A mile becomes a long way, two miles literally considerable, ten miles… — 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
