When the poet Paul Valery once asked Albert Einstein if he kept a notebook to record his ideas, Einstein looked at him with mild but genuine surprise. “Oh, that’s not necessary,” he replied . “It’s so seldom I have one.
BILL BRYSONWhen the poet Paul Valery once asked Albert Einstein if he kept a notebook to record his ideas, Einstein looked at him with mild but genuine surprise. “Oh, that’s not necessary,” he replied . “It’s so seldom I have one.
BILL BRYSONSuddenly you are five years old again. You can’t read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can’t even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.
BILL BRYSONWhere I grew up, in Des Moines, Iowa, there is hardly any downtown economic activity now. Everybody shops in malls – you don’t find a sense of community in malls.
BILL BRYSONSo that buildings and structures you normally pass without a glance suddenly become arresting, even beautiful? Well, they seem to have that light in Australia nearly all the time.
BILL BRYSONCorrect 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 BRYSONI have long known that it is part of God’s plan for me to spend a little time with each of the most stupid people on earth.
BILL BRYSONFour times I was honked at for having the temerity to proceed through town without the benefit of metal.
BILL BRYSONYou don’t have to know anything about baseball to respond to Babe Ruth because he’s just this magnificent human being.
BILL BRYSONIt is unthinkable to have a British countryside that doesn’t have actual functioning farmers riding tractors, cows in fields, things like that.
BILL BRYSONAs humans we are doubly lucky, of course: We enjoy not only the privilege of existence but also the singular ability to appreciate it and even, in a multitude of ways, to make it better. It is a talent we have only barely begun to grasp.
BILL BRYSONThat is jargon – the practice of never calling a spade a spade when you might instead call it a manual earth-restructuring implement – and it is one of the great curses of modern English.
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 BRYSONBut here’s an extrememly salient point: we have been chosen, by fate or Providence or whatever you wish to call it. As far as we can tell, we are the best there is.
BILL BRYSONStill, I never really mind bad service in a restaurant. It makes me feel better about not leaving a tip.
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 BRYSON“Croissant”: However you choose to pronounce it at home, it is perhaps worth nothing that outside the United States, the closer you can come to saying “kwass-ohn,” the sooner you can expect to be presented with one.
BILL BRYSON