I’m not a natural story-teller. Put a keyboard in front of me and I’m fine, but stand me up in front of an audience and I’m actually quite shy and reserved.
BILL BRYSONAmong 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?
More Bill Bryson Quotes
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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.
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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.
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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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In three minutes, 98 percent of all the matter there is or will ever be has been produced. We have a universe
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In the countryside, litter doesn’t have a friend. It doesn’t have anybody who’s saying, ‘Wait a minute, this is really starting to get out of control.’
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He had the sort of face that makes you realize God does have a sense of humor.
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Because time moves more slowly in Kid World … it goes on for decades … It is adult life that is over in a twinkling.
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I can’t think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything.
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Language is more fashion than science, and matters of usage, spelling and pronunciation tend to wander around like hemlines.
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Every living thing is an elaboration of a single original plan. As humans we are mere increments – each of us a musty archive of adjustments, adaptations, modifications and providential tinkerings stretching back to 3,8 billion years.
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An awful lot of England is slowly eroding, in ways that I find really distressing, and an awful lot of it is the hedgerows…
BILL BRYSON -
The remarkable position in which we find ourselves is that we don’t actually know what we actually know.
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…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.
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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.
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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