If a potato can produce vitamin C, why can’t we? Within the animal kingdom only humans and guinea pigs are unable to synthesize vitamin C in their own bodies. Why us and guinea pigs? No point asking. Nobody knows.
BILL BRYSONIf a potato can produce vitamin C, why can’t we? Within the animal kingdom only humans and guinea pigs are unable to synthesize vitamin C in their own bodies. Why us and guinea pigs? No point asking. Nobody knows.
BILL BRYSONBy the most astounding stroke of luck an infinitesimal portion of all the matter in the universe came together to create you and for the tiniest moment in the great span of eternity you have the incomparable privilege to exist.
BILL BRYSONMaine is wonderful. It can be very hard. I mean, if you look at the profile maps it doesn’t look it, but somehow when you get out there it’s really steep and hard.
BILL BRYSONHouses aren’t refuges from history. They are where history ends up.
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 BRYSONAnd before long there will be no more milk in bottles delivered to the doorstep or sleepy rural pubs, and the countryside will be mostly shopping centers and theme parks.
BILL BRYSONThere is something about the momentum of travel that makes you want to just keep moving, to never stop.
BILL BRYSONA third…candidate for Shakespearean authorship was Christopher Marlowe. He was the right age (just two months older than Shakespeare), had the requisite talent, and would certainly have had ample leisure after 1593, assuming he wasn’t too dead to work.
BILL BRYSONI have a small tattered clipping that I sometimes carry with meand pull out for purposes of privateamusement. It’s a weather forecast from theWestern Daily Mail and it says, in toto: ‘Outlook: Dry and warm, but cooler with some rain.
BILL BRYSONWoods are not like other spaces. To begin with, they are cubic. Their trees surround you, loom over you, press in from all sides. Woods choke off views & leave you muddled & without bearings.
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 BRYSONClearly, some time ago makers and consumers of American junk food passed jointly through some kind of sensibility barrier in the endless quest for new taste sensations.
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 BRYSONRoads get wider and busier and less friendly to pedestrians. And all of the development based around cars, like big sprawling shopping malls.
BILL BRYSONCheapness is a great virtue.
BILL BRYSONA sign in the yard of a church next door said CHRIST IS THE ANSWER. (The question, of course, is: What do you say when you strike your thumb with a hammer?)
BILL BRYSON