Bill Bryson Quotes - Page 9

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• Our instinct may be to see the impossibility of tracking everything down as frustrating, dispiriting, perhaps even appalling, but it can just as well be viewed as almost unbearably exciting. We live on a planet that has a more or less infinite capacity to surprise. What reasoning person could possibly want it any other way?

  Bill Bryson

  May, Want, Way

  5 Copy quote

• I always wanted to do a baseball book; I love baseball. The problem is that a very large part of my following is in non-baseball playing countries.

  Bill Bryson

  Baseball, Country, Book

  5 Copy quote

• I can't imagine there has ever been a more gratifying time or place to be alive than America in the 1950s. No country had ever known such prosperity.

  Bill Bryson

  Country, America, Alive

  Bill Bryson (2006). “The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid”

  4 Copy quote

• I don't know whether I'm misanthropic. It seems to me I'm constantly disappointed. I'm very easily disappointed.

  Bill Bryson

  Misanthropic, Disappointed, Knows

  "You have only so many jokes" by Simon Hattenstone, www.theguardian.com. November 22, 2002.

  7 Copy quote

• Nearly a quarter of American men were in the Armed forces. The rest were in school, in prison, or were George W. Bush.

  Bill Bryson

  School, Men, Prison

  "The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid". Book by Bill Bryson, 2006.

  5 Copy quote

• I don't want to go and start trying to make jokes in places like India, Tanzania or Iraq. Afghanistan is not a funny place.

  Bill Bryson

  Iraq, Trying, India

  4 Copy quote

• For a long time, I'd been vaguely fascinated by the idea that Charles Lindbergh flew the Atlantic and Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs in the same summer.

  Bill Bryson

  Summer, Running, Home

  "Bill Bryson changes course for 'One Summer'". Interview with Todd Leopold, www.cnn.com. October 28, 2013.

  6 Copy quote

• England was full of words I'd never heard before - streaky bacon, short back and sides, Belisha beacon, serviettes, high tea, ice-cream cornet.

  Bill Bryson

  Ice Cream, Tea, Sides

  Bill Bryson (2015). “Notes from a Small Island”, p.14, HarperCollins

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• I often feel I'm a disappointment to people because they expect me to be the guy in the books. When I sit next to someone at a dinner party I can see they expect me to be quick and witty, and I'm not at all.

  Bill Bryson

  Witty, Disappointment, Party

  4 Copy quote

• A third...candidate for Shakespearean authorship was Christopher Marlowe. He was the right age (just two months older than Shakespeare), had the requisite talent, and would certainly have had ample leisure after 1593, assuming he wasn't too dead to work.

  Bill Bryson

  Two, Age, Leisure

  4 Copy quote

• America is a great disappointment to me. As I said in one of my books, other societies create civilisations; we build shopping malls.

  Bill Bryson

  Disappointment, Book, Shopping

  8 Copy quote

• America is a very seductive place in terms of lifestyle and comfort, but it wasn't for me.

  Bill Bryson

  America, Seductive, Comfort

  5 Copy quote

• You can be a scientist and believe in god: the two can go hand in hand.

  Bill Bryson

  Believe, Hands, Two

  "Bill Bryson answers your questions". www.theguardian.com. March 10, 2005.

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  People, Want, Misanthropic

  "'You have only so many jokes'". Interview with Simon Hattenstone, www.theguardian.com. November 22, 2002.

  11 Copy quote

• "Croissant": However you choose to pronounce it at home, it is perhaps worth nothing that outside the United States, the closer you can come to saying "kwass-ohn," the sooner you can expect to be presented with one.

  Bill Bryson

  Home, United States, Croissants

  50 Copy quote

• Cheapness is a great virtue.

  Bill Bryson

  Virtue, Cheapness

  5 Copy quote

• Des Moines is like your typical American city; it's just these concentric circles of malls, built outward from the city.

  Bill Bryson

  Cities, Circles, Typical

  7 Copy quote

• Every kid I knew had a father with a little stash of men's magazines which the father thought was secret and which the kid knew all about.

  Bill Bryson

  Father, Kids, Men

  Bill Bryson (1989). “The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-town America”, p.61, VNR AG

  4 Copy quote

• I have a small tattered clipping that I sometimes carry with meand pull out for purposes of privateamusement. It's a weather forecast from theWestern Daily Mail and it says, in toto: 'Outlook: Dry and warm, but cooler with some rain.

  Bill Bryson

  Rain, Weather, Mail

  1995 Notes from a Small Island.

  4 Copy quote

• 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.'

  Bill Bryson

  Waiting, Starting, Minutes

  "How clean is my valley?" by Tim Dowling, www.theguardian.com. May 5, 2007.

  4 Copy quote

• It is not as if farming brought a great improvement in living standards either. A typical hunter-gatherer enjoyed a more varied diet and consumed more protein and calories than settled people, and took in five times as much viatmin C as the average person today.

  Bill Bryson

  Average, People, Typical

  Bill Bryson (2010). “At Home: A Short History of Private Life”, p.66, Random House

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• You may find that your parents are the most delightful people, but you don't want to live with them.

  Bill Bryson

  People, Parent, May

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• It isn't easy to become a fossil. ... Only about one bone in a billion, it is thought, becomes fossilized. If that is so, it means that the complete fossil legacy of all the Americans alive today - that's 270 million people with 206 bones each - will only be about 50 bones, one-quarter of a complete skeleton. That's not to say, of course, that any of these bones will ever actually be found.

  Bill Bryson

  Mean, Science, Skeletons

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• I do find London exciting. Much as I hate to agree with that tedious old git Samuel Johnson, and despite the pompous imbecility of his famous remark about when a man is tired of London he is tired of life...I can't dispute it.

  Bill Bryson

  Hate, Tired, Men

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• If you drive to, say, Shenandoah National Park, or the Great Smoky Mountains, you'll get some appreciation for the scale and beauty of the outdoors. When you walk into it, then you see it in a completely different way. You discover it in a much slower, more majestic sort of way.

  Bill Bryson

  Gratitude, Appreciation, Mountain

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