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The one thing we have in common with all other living things is that for nearly four billions years our ancestors have managed to slip through a series of closing doors every time we needed them to.

Bill Bryson

Where 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 BRYSON

Community Downtown Iowa
The people are immensely likable- cheerful, extrovert, quick-witted, and unfailingly obliging. Their cities are safe and clean and nearly always built on water. They have a society that is prosperous, well ordered, and instinctively egalitarian.
BILL BRYSON

Beer Cheerful Cities Coffee
A 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

Church Doors Yards
18th century scientists, the French in particular, seldom did things simply if an absurdly demanding alternative was available.
BILL BRYSON

Alternatives Century Scientist
A billion more each came from Buddha and Genghis Khan and Beethoven, and any other historical figure you care to name.
BILL BRYSON

Billion Buddha Name
The whole of the global economy is based on supplying the cravings of two per cent of the world’s population.
BILL BRYSON

Population Two World
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

Dark Growing Thinking Up
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
You can be a scientist and believe in god: the two can go hand in hand.
BILL BRYSON

Believe Hands Scientist
This much may have happened many times before. But this ancestral packet did something additional and extraordinary. It cleaved itself and produced an heir.
BILL BRYSON

Additional Cleaveed Produced Something
The one thing we have in common with all other living things is that for nearly four billions years our ancestors have managed to slip through a series of closing doors every time we needed them to.
BILL BRYSON

Billion Closing Common Doors Managed Thing Years
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
“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

Croissants Home United States
In terms of adaptability, humans are pretty amazingly useless.
BILL BRYSON

Adaptability Term Useless
Germans 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 BRYSON

Fun Inspirational Sarcastic
Correct 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 BRYSON

Country Mastered Nation Ought

The one thing we have in common with all other living things is that for nearly four billions years our ancestors have managed to slip through a series of closing doors every time we needed them to.

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The one thing we have in common with all other living things is that for nearly four billions years our ancestors have managed to slip through a series of closing doors every time we needed them to.

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Popular Authors

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