Bill Bryson Quotes

Quotes about:

• Take a moment from time to time to remember that you are alive. I know this sounds a trifle obvious, but it is amazing how little time we take to remark upon this singular and gratifying fact. 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

  Luck, Together, Sound

  59 Copy quote

• It is always quietly thrilling to find yourself looking at a world you know well but have never seen from such an angle before.

  Bill Bryson

  Finding Yourself, World, Angle

  Bill Bryson (2010). “At Home: A Short History of Private Life”, p.17, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Stupid, Long, People

  "A Walk in the Woods". Book by Bill Bryson. Chapter 4 (p. 51), 1997.

  15 Copy quote

• To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.

  Bill Bryson

  Life, Summer, Travel

  33 Copy quote

• There are three stages in scientific discovery. First, people deny that it is true, then they deny that it is important; finally they credit the wrong person.

  Bill Bryson

  Discovery, People, Important

  7 Copy quote

• That's the trouble with losing your mind; by the time it's gone, it's too late to get it back.

  Bill Bryson

  Mind, Too Late, Gone

  53 Copy quote

• Open your refrigerator door, and you summon forth more light than the total amount enjoyed by most households in the 18th century. The world at night, for much of history, was a very dark place, indeed.

  Bill Bryson

  Dark, Night, Light

  "At Bryson's House, 'Home' Is Where The History Is". Interview with Renee Montagne, www.npr.org. October 5, 2010.

  5 Copy quote

• The English invented cricket to make other human endeavors look interesting.

  Bill Bryson

  Interesting, Looks, Cricket

  5 Copy quote

• English is full of booby traps for the unwary foreigner. Any language where the unassuming word fly signifies an annoying insect, a means of travel, and a critical part of a gentleman's apparel is clearly asking to be mangled.

  Bill Bryson

  Mean, Gentleman, Asking

  Bill Bryson (1990). “The Mother Tongue”, William Morrow Paperbacks

  15 Copy quote

• And I find chopsticks frankly distressing. Am I alone in thinking it odd that a people ingenious enough to invent paper, gunpowder, kites and any number of other useful objects, and who have a noble history extending back 3,000 years haven't yet worked out that a pair of knitting needles is no way to capture food?

  Bill Bryson

  Food, Thinking, Knitting Needles

  Bill Bryson (2010). “Notes From A Small Island: Journey Through Britain”, p.145, Random House

  56 Copy quote

• It's an unnerving thought that we may be the living universe's supreme achievement and its worst nightmare simultaneously.

  Bill Bryson

  Worst Nightmares, Achievement, May

  Bill Bryson (2014). “A Short History of Nearly Everything”, p.435, Lulu Press, Inc

  6 Copy quote

• As James Surowiecki noted in a New Yorker article, given a choice between developing antibiotics that people will take every day for two weeks and antidepressants that people will take every day for ever, drug companies not surprisingly opt for the latter. Although a few antibiotics have been toughened up a bit, the pharmaceutical industry hasn't given us an entirely new antibiotic since the 1970s.

  Bill Bryson

  Two, People, Choices

  12 Copy quote

• Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result -- eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly -- in you.

  Bill Bryson

  Order, Quests, Tiny

  FaceBook post by Bill Bryson from Mar 09, 2013

  27 Copy quote

• I ordered a coffee and a little something to eat and savored the warmth and dryness. Somewhere in the background Nat King Cole sang a perky tune. I watched the rain beat down on the road outside and told myself that one day this would be twenty years ago.

  Bill Bryson

  Kings, Rain, Coffee

  32 Copy quote

• Of all the things I am not very good at, living in the real world is perhaps the most outstanding.

  Bill Bryson

  Real, World, Good Advice

  "I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away". Book by Bill Bryson, June 6, 2000.

  28 Copy quote

• 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, Worry, Television

  Bill Bryson (1991). “Neither here nor there: travels in Europe”, Harvill Secker

  5 Copy quote

• There is always a little more toothpaste in the tube. Think about it.

  Bill Bryson

  Thinking, Littles, Toothpaste

  Bill Bryson (2000). “The Complete Notes”, Random House

  11 Copy quote

• Out of the thirty thousand types of edible plants thought to exist on Earth, just eleven—corn, rice, wheat, potatoes, cassava, sorghum, millet, beans, barley, rye, and oats—account for 93 percent of all that humans eat, and every one of them was first cultivated by our Neolithic ancestors.

  Bill Bryson

  Oats, Wheat, Potatoes

  FaceBook post by Bill Bryson from Jul 05, 2016

  34 Copy quote

• If this book has a lesson, it is that we are awfully lucky to be here-and by 'we' I mean every living thing. To attain any kind of life in this universe of ours appears to be quite an achievement. As humans we are doubly lucky, of course: We enjoy not only the privilege of existence but also the singular ability to appreciate it and even, in a multitude of ways, to make it better. It is a talent we have only barely begun to grasp.

  Bill Bryson

  Book, Mean, Appreciate

  Bill Bryson (2010). “A Short History of Nearly Everything”, p.573, Random House

  12 Copy quote

• No one knows, incidentally, why Australia's spiders are so extravagantly toxic; capturing small insects and injecting them with enough poison to drop a horse would appear to be the most literal case of overkill. Still, it does mean that everyone gives them lots of space.

  Bill Bryson

  Horse, Mean, Australia

  Bill Bryson (2001). “In a Sunburned Country”, Broadway

  9 Copy quote

• Because we humans are big and clever enough to produce and utilize antibiotics and disinfectants, it is easy to convince ourselves that we have banished bacteria to the fringes of existence. Don't you believe it. Bacteria may not build cities or have interesting social lives, but they will be here when the Sun explodes. This is their planet, and we are on it only because they allow us to be.

  Bill Bryson

  Clever, Believe, Cities

  Bill Bryson (2014). “A Short History of Nearly Everything”, p.278, Lulu Press, Inc

  30 Copy quote

• But that's the glory of foreign travel, as far as I am concerned. I don't want to know what people are talking about. 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. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can't read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can't even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.

  Bill Bryson

  Country, Travel, Memorable

  Bill Bryson (1991). “Neither here nor there: travels in Europe”, Harvill Secker

  56 Copy quote

• Eating in Sweden is really just a series of heartbreaks.

  Bill Bryson

  Sweden, Eating, Series

  Bill Bryson (1991). “Neither here nor there: travels in Europe”, Harvill Secker

  5 Copy quote

• 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, Lap, Way

  Bill Bryson (1991). “Neither here nor there: travels in Europe”, Harvill Secker

  6 Copy quote

• 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, and the other half telling you how six months ago their Uncle Bob was driving to Mudgee when a tiger snake slid out from under the dashboard and bit him on the groin, but that it's okay now because he's off the life support machine and they've discovered he can communicate with eye blinks.

  Bill Bryson

  Country, Uncles, Eye

  11 Copy quote

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