There is no such thing, incidentally, as one kudo.
BILL BRYSONThere is no such thing, incidentally, as one kudo.
BILL BRYSONThe remarkable position in which we find ourselves is that we don’t actually know what we actually know.
BILL BRYSONTime, you discover, has wrought changes that leave you feeling mildly foolish and out of touch.
BILL BRYSONThe English invented cricket to make other human endeavors look interesting.
BILL BRYSONGermans are flummoxed by humor, the Swiss have no concept of fun, the Spanish think there is nothing at all ridiculous about eating dinner at midnight, and the Italians should never, ever have been let in on the invention of the motor car.
BILL BRYSONI wanted to see what was out there. All over America today people would be dragging themselves to work, stuck in traffic jams, wreathed in exhaust smoke. I was going for a walk in the woods. I was more than ready for this.
BILL BRYSONI can’t think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything.
BILL BRYSONMost of the time I am sunk in thought, but at some point on each walk there comes a moment when I look up and notice, with a kind of first-time astonishment.
BILL BRYSONI must say, so long as the car is not actually moving. However, as soon as you put the car in motion … everything slides off … It can hold nothing that has not been nailed to it. So I ask you: what then is it for?
BILL BRYSONI don’t know whether I’m misanthropic. It seems to me I’m constantly disappointed. I’m very easily disappointed.
BILL BRYSONIf you drive to, say, Shenandoah National Park, or the Great Smoky Mountains, you’ll get some appreciation for the scale and beauty of the outdoors.
BILL BRYSONBut that’s the glory of foreign travel, as far as I am concerned. I don’t want to know what people are talking about. I can’t think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything.
BILL BRYSONI 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.
BILL BRYSONFinally, this being America, there is the constant possibility of murder.
BILL BRYSONIn France, a chemist named Pilatre de Rozier tested the flammability of hydrogen by gulping a mouthful and blowing across an open flame, proving at a stroke that hydrogen is indeed explosively combustible and that eyebrows are not necessarily a permanent feature of one’s face.
BILL BRYSONTraveling is more fun – hell, life is more fun – if you can treat it as a series of impulses.
BILL BRYSON