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When you consider it from a human perspective, and clearly it would be difficult for us to do otherwise, life is an odd thing. It couldn’t wait to get going, but then, having gotten going, it seemed in very little hurry to move on.

Bill Bryson

The whole of the global economy is based on supplying the cravings of two per cent of the world’s population.
BILL BRYSON

Population Two World
The food is excellent. The beer is cold. The sun nearly always shines. There is coffee on every corner. Life doesn’t get much better than this.
BILL BRYSON

Always Better Excellent Food Shines
It’s hard not to be kind of pessimistic about human beings generally, because we do tend to mess things up. If you just look at the history of extinctions, we’ve killed off an awful lot of animals – and I don’t think we’re doing a very good job of looking after the planet.
BILL BRYSON

Animal History Human Jobs Pessimistic Thinking
I just use my life story as a kind of device on which to hang comic observations. It’s not my interest or instinct to tell the world anything pertinent about myself or my family.
BILL BRYSON

Stories Use World
Consider the Lichen. Lichens are just about the hardiest visible organisms on Earth, but the least ambitious.
BILL BRYSON

Ambitious Earth Visible
…and it occurred to me, with the forcefulness of a thought experienced in 360 degrees, that that’s really what history mostly is: masses of people doing ordinary things.
BILL BRYSON

Degree Ordinary People
You may not feel outstandingly robust, but if you are an average-sized adult you will contain within your modest frame no less than 7 X 10^18 joules of potential energy.
BILL BRYSON

Average Bomb Energy Hydrogen
Correct me if I’m wrong, but you would think that if one nation ought by now to have mastered the science of drainage, Britain would be it.
BILL BRYSON

Country Mastered Nation Ought
But what is life to a lichen ? Yet its impulse to exist, to be, is every bit as strong as ours arguably even stronger. If I were told that I had to spend decades being a furry growth on a rock in the woods, I believe I would lose the will to go on.
BILL BRYSON

Believe Rocks Strong
It’s an unnerving thought that we may be the living universe’s supreme achievement and its worst nightmare simultaneously.
BILL BRYSON

Achievement May T Nightmare Wors
Human beings would split the atom and invent television, nylon, and instant coffee before they could figure out the age of their own planet.
BILL BRYSON

Age Coffee Figure Nylon Planet
From an evolutionary point of view, sex is really just a reward mechanism to encourage us to pass on our genetic material.
BILL BRYSON

Rewards Sex Views
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

Essentially Good Orphan Player Story Successful
This much may have happened many times before. But this ancestral packet did something additional and extraordinary. It cleaved itself and produced an heir.
BILL BRYSON

Additional Cleaveed Produced Something
The first book I did – the first successful book – was a kind of a travel book, and publishers in Britain encouraged me to do more.
BILL BRYSON

Book First Successful
We may be all there is. It’s an unnerving thought that we may be the living universe’s supreme achievement and its worst nightmare simultaneously.
BILL BRYSON

Achievement Nightmare Simultaneously Worst

When you consider it from a human perspective, and clearly it would be difficult for us to do otherwise, life is an odd thing. It couldn’t wait to get going, but then, having gotten going, it seemed in very little hurry to move on.

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When you consider it from a human perspective, and clearly it would be difficult for us to do otherwise, life is an odd thing. It couldn’t wait to get going, but then, having gotten going, it seemed in very little hurry to move on.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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