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When I was growing up I used to think that the best thing about coming from Des Moines was that it meant you didn’t come from anywhere else in Iowa. By Iowa standards.

Bill Bryson

You may not feel outstandingly robust, but if you are an average-sized adult you will contain within your modest frame no less than 7 X 10^18 joules of potential energy.
BILL BRYSON

Average Bomb Energy Hydrogen
Traveling makes you realize what an immeasurably nice place much of America could be if only people possessed the same instinct for preservation as they do in Europe.
BILL BRYSON

Europe Nice Travel
Hunters will tell you that a moose is a wily and ferocious forest creature. Nonsense. A moose is a cow drawn by a three-year-old.
BILL BRYSON

Hunters Nature Years
I 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 BRYSON

Going Themselves Wanted Wood Work Wreathed
Beulah has a husband?’ I know. It’s a miracle. There can’t be more than two people on the planet who’d be willing to sleep with her, and here we are both in the same town.
BILL BRYSON

Husband Sleep Two
For a long time, I’d been vaguely fascinated by the idea that Charles Lindbergh flew the Atlantic and Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs in the same summer.
BILL BRYSON

Fascinated Home Run Running Summer
You may find that your parents are the most delightful people, but you don’t want to live with them.
BILL BRYSON

May Parents People
English is full of booby traps for the unwary foreigner. Any language where the unassuming word fly signifies an annoying insect, a means of travel, and a critical part of a gentleman’s apparel is clearly asking to be mangled.
BILL BRYSON

Asking Gentleman Mean
We may be all there is. It’s an unnerving thought that we may be the living universe’s supreme achievement and its worst nightmare simultaneously.
BILL BRYSON

Achievement Nightmare Simultaneously Worst
The one upstairs room in which the Duke had resided was packed to the ceiling with hundreds of green boxes, each of which contained a single dark brown wig. This was, in short, a man worth getting to know.
BILL BRYSON

Boxes Getting Hundred Mna Upstair Worth
In order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result — eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly — in you.
BILL BRYSON

Astoundingly Briefly Combination Result
That may not be the profoundest of insights to take away from a morning’s outing, but I did get a free doughnut as well, so on balance I guess I’m happy.
BILL BRYSON

Balance Guess Happy Insights Morning Outing Profounded
I see litter as part of a long continuum of anti-social behaviour.
BILL BRYSON

Behaviour Long Social
…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 BRYSON

Degree Ordinary People
A belief that no commercial activities must be allowed inside the park, but permitting unrestrained development outside, even though the landscape there may be just as outstanding.
BILL BRYSON

Commercial Development Outside Outstanding Permitting
Roads get wider and busier and less friendly to pedestrians. And all of the development based around cars, like big sprawling shopping malls.
BILL BRYSON

Car Friendly Shopping

When I was growing up I used to think that the best thing about coming from Des Moines was that it meant you didn’t come from anywhere else in Iowa. By Iowa standards.

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When I was growing up I used to think that the best thing about coming from Des Moines was that it meant you didn’t come from anywhere else in Iowa. By Iowa standards.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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