To understand what anyone is saying to us we must separate these noises into words and the words into sentences so that we might in our turn issue a stream of mixed sounds in response.
BILL BRYSONTo understand what anyone is saying to us we must separate these noises into words and the words into sentences so that we might in our turn issue a stream of mixed sounds in response.
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 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 BRYSONMaking English grammar conform to Latin rules is like asking people to play baseball using the rules of football.
BILL BRYSON…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 BRYSONBecause we humans are big and clever enough to produce and utilize antibiotics and disinfectants, it is easy to convince ourselves that we have banished bacteria to the fringes of existence.
BILL BRYSONAt a conference of sociologists in America in 1977, love was defined as “the cognitive-affective state characterized by intrusive and obsessive fantasizing concerning reciprocity of amorant feelings by the object of the amorance.”.
BILL BRYSONI think it’s only right that crazy people should have their own city, but I cannot for the life of me see why a sane person would want to go there.
BILL BRYSONAs the saying goes, it takes all kinds to make the world go around, though perhaps some shouldn’t go quite so far around it as others.
BILL BRYSONWhen the Duke [W.J.C. Scott-Bentinck] died, his heirs found all of the aboveground rooms devoid of furnishings except for one chamber in the middle of which sat the Duke’s commode. The main hall was mysteriously floor less. Most of the rooms were painted pink.
BILL BRYSONIndeed, if your pillow is six years old–which is apparently about the average age for a pillow–it has been estimated that one-tenth of its weight will be made up of sloughed skin, living mites, dead mites and mite dung.
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 wanted to quit and to do this forever, sleep in a bed and in a tent, see what was over the next hill and never see a hill again. All of this all at once, every moment, on the trail or off.
BILL BRYSONEnergy is liberated matter, matter is energy waiting to happen.
BILL BRYSONRomans park their cars the way I would park if I had just spilled a beaker of hydrochloric acid on my lap.
BILL BRYSONThe whole of the global economy is based on supplying the cravings of two per cent of the world’s population.
BILL BRYSON