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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

I became quietly seized with that nostalgia that overcomes you when you have reached the middle of your life and your father has recently died and it dawns on you that when he went he took some of you with him.
BILL BRYSON

Dawn Father Nostalgia Overcome Overcoming
Houses aren’t refuges from history. They are where history ends up.
BILL BRYSON

Ends House Refuge
All the things that are part of your heritage make you British – that makes this country what it is. It’s part of your history. And here, unlike America, it’s still living history.
BILL BRYSON

Country Heritage History Thing
I don’t know whether I’m misanthropic. It seems to me I’m constantly disappointed. I’m very easily disappointed. Disappointed in the things that people do; disappointed in the things that people construct. I want things to be better all the time.
BILL BRYSON

Disappointed Misanthropic People Time Want
The world, you realize, is enormous in a way that only you and a small community of fellow hikers know. Planetary scale is your little secret.
BILL BRYSON

Enormous Realize Scale Secret Way
I have long known that it is part of God’s plan for me to spend a little time with each of the most stupid people on earth.
BILL BRYSON

Long People Stupid
It is unthinkable to have a British countryside that doesn’t have actual functioning farmers riding tractors, cows in fields, things like that.
BILL BRYSON

Cows Fields Riding
South Dakota… is like the world’s first drive-through sensory deprivation chamber.
BILL BRYSON

Deprivation Firsts World
Because time moves more slowly in Kid World … it goes on for decades … It is adult life that is over in a twinkling.
BILL BRYSON

Adults Kids Moving
To my mind, the only possible pet is a cow. Cows love you. They will listen to your problems and never ask a thing in return. They will be your friends forever. And when you get tired of them, you can kill and eat them. Perfect.
BILL BRYSON

Love You Perfect Tired
I know that communism never worked and I would have disliked living under it myself but none the less it seems that there was a kind of sadness in the thought that the only economic system that appeared to work was one based on self interest and greed.
BILL BRYSON

Disliked Economic Seems Under Work
Absolute brain size does not tell you everything or possibly sometimes even much. Elephants and whales both have brains larger than ours, but you wouldn’t have much trouble outwitting them in contract negotiations.
BILL BRYSON

Brain Elephants Whales
Four times I was honked at for having the temerity to proceed through town without the benefit of metal.
BILL BRYSON

Benefits Hiking Journey
On the dashboard of our family car is a shallow indentation about the size of a paperback book. If you are looking for somewhere to put your sunglasses or spare change, it is the obvious place, and it works extremely well,
BILL BRYSON

Book Car Dashboard Family Long Moving
Life just wants to be; but it doesn’t want to be much.
BILL BRYSON

Life Want Wonderful
Britain still has the most reliably beautiful countryside of anywhere in the world. I would hate to be part of the generation that allowed that to be lost.
BILL BRYSON

Beautiful Generations Hate

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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