Anyone who has read my books will know that I don’t tend to use guides when I am travelling. It’s not a pride thing, but it is certainly a fact.
BILL BRYSONIt is a curious feature of our existance that we come from a planet that is very good at promoting life but even better at extinguishing it.
More Bill Bryson Quotes
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Maine 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.
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Suddenly, in the space of a moment, I realized what it was that I loved about Britain – which is to say, all of it.
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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.
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In a funny way, nothing makes you feel more like a native of your own country than to live where nearly everyone is not.
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To my surprise, I felt a certain springy keenness. I was ready to hike. I had waited months for this day, after all, even if it had been mostly with foreboding.
BILL BRYSON -
I understand now, in a way I never did before, the colossal scale of the world. I found patience and fortitude that I didn’t know I had. I discovered an America that millions of people scarcely know exists. I made a friend. I came home.
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We used to build civilizations. Now we build shopping malls.
BILL BRYSON -
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 -
I must say, so long as the car is not actually moving. However, as soon as you put the car in motion … everything slides off … It can hold nothing that has not been nailed to it. So I ask you: what then is it for?
BILL BRYSON -
I 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 BRYSON -
Among the errors cited in this book are a number committed by some of the leading authorities of this century. If men such as Fowler and Bernstein and Quirk and Howard cannot always get their English right, is it reasonable to expect the rest of us to?
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Life just wants to be; but it doesn’t want to be much.
BILL BRYSON -
Columbus real achievement was managing to cross the ocean successfully in both directions. Though an accomplished enough mariner, he was not terribly good at a great deal else, especially geography, the skill that would seem most vital in an explorer.
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Woods 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.
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Of all the things I am not very good at, living in the real world is perhaps the most outstanding.
BILL BRYSON