There seemed to be a mystifying universal conspiracy among textbook authors to make certain the material they dealt with never strayed too near the realm of the mildly interesting and was always at least a long-distance phone call from the frankly interesting.
BILL BRYSONI love the feeling of being anonymous in a city I’ve never been before.
More Bill Bryson Quotes
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Life just wants to be; but it doesn’t want to be much.
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Yes, U.S. travelers dress better. The British are always so conspicuous in hot climates. They don’t seem to wear shorts. American men seem to be comfortable wearing hot-weather clothing.
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I became quietly seized with that nostalgia that overcomes you when you have reached the middle of your life and your father has recently died and it dawns on you that when he went he took some of you with him.
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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.
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When you tell an Iowan a joke, you can see a kind of race going on between his brain and his expression.
BILL BRYSON -
Every living thing is an elaboration of a single original plan. As humans we are mere increments – each of us a musty archive of adjustments, adaptations, modifications and providential tinkerings stretching back to 3,8 billion years.
BILL BRYSON -
If you believe in god, it’s much more fantastic to believe that he created this universe billions of years ago and set in motion this long train of activities that eventually resulted in us. I think that’s so much more satisfying, more thrilling, than the idea that it was all done in seven days.
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You can be a scientist and believe in god: the two can go hand in hand.
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Even though sugar was very expensive, people consumed it till their teeth turned black, and if their teeth didn’t turn black naturally, they blackened them artificially to show how wealthy and marvelously self-indulgent they were.
BILL BRYSON -
I know that communism never worked and I would have disliked living under it myself but none the less it seems that there was a kind of sadness in the thought that the only economic system that appeared to work was one based on self interest and greed.
BILL BRYSON -
Energy is liberated matter, matter is energy waiting to happen.
BILL BRYSON -
Ordnance Survey maps, tea and crumpets, summer showers and foggy winter evenings – every bit of it.
BILL BRYSON -
I ordered a coffee and a little something to eat and savored the warmth and dryness. Somewhere in the background Nat King Cole sang a perky tune. I watched the rain beat down on the road outside and told myself that one day this would be twenty years ago.
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Everything seems to be designed for the benefit of the automobile and not the benefit of the human being.
BILL BRYSON -
America is a very seductive place in terms of lifestyle and comfort, but it wasn’t for me.
BILL BRYSON