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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

In a funny way, nothing makes you feel more like a native of your own country than to live where nearly everyone is not.
BILL BRYSON

Country Feels Way
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?
BILL BRYSON

Among Books Century Cities Critics Flower Leading Some
Romans park their cars the way I would park if I had just spilled a beaker of hydrochloric acid on my lap.
BILL BRYSON

Car Hydrochloric Lap Way
A tiny bundle of genetic material passed from one living entity to another, and has never stopped moving since. It was the moment of creation for us all.
BILL BRYSON

Another Bundle Creation Material Passed
In terms of adaptability, humans are pretty amazingly useless.
BILL BRYSON

Adaptability Term Useless
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
By 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 BRYSON

Eternity Moment Time Together Universe
Human beings would split the atom and invent television, nylon, and instant coffee before they could figure out the age of their own planet.
BILL BRYSON

Age Coffee Figure Nylon Planet
The best that can be said for Norwegian television is that it gives you the sensation of a coma without the worry and inconvenience.
BILL BRYSON

Giving Television Worry
Americans now get in a car. On average the total walking of an American these days – that’s walking of all types: from car to office, from office to car, around the supermarket and shopping malls – adds up to 1.4 miles a week, barely 350 yards a day.
BILL BRYSON

Around Average Shopping Supermarket Walking
I just use my life story as a kind of device on which to hang comic observations. It’s not my interest or instinct to tell the world anything pertinent about myself or my family.
BILL BRYSON

Stories Use World
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
Still, I never really mind bad service in a restaurant. It makes me feel better about not leaving a tip.
BILL BRYSON

Better Feel Leaving Mind
In three minutes, 98 percent of all the matter there is or will ever be has been produced. We have a universe
BILL BRYSON

Matter Minutes Three
Now they are a little like those desperate junkies who have tried every known drug and are finally reduced to mainlining toilet bowl cleanser in an effort to get still higher.
BILL BRYSON

Desperate Higher Known Maintaining Reduced Tried
Australians are very unfair in this way. They spend half of any conversation insisting that the country’s dangers are vastly overrated and that there’s nothing to worry about.
BILL BRYSON

Conversation Country Eye Insisting Uncles

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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