You get to stay in nice hotels, you are driven everywhere in big silver cars, you are treated as if you are much more important than you are, you can eat steak three times a day at someone else's expense, and you get to talk endlessly about yourself for weeks at a stretch. All bears are agile, cunning and immensely strong, and they are always hungry. He wrote a number of books such as “A Short History of Nearly Everything” (2003), “Notes from a Small Island” (1995) and “The Mother Tongue” (1990). It was a link with my children, whom I missed more than I can tell you. My dad had a house full of books, things like P.G. Maine is wonderful. Bill Bryson is an American-British author, born in 1951. The summer of 1927 came to an end, but nothing else did - all of these peoples' lives went on. I mean, sometimes we make mistakes and bad judgments and kind of back the wrong regimes and things, but by and large what America does is really good. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses. But I just smiled benignly and stood back, comforted by the thought that soon they would be dead. 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. The people are immensely likable— cheerful, extrovert, quick-witted, and unfailingly obliging. It's not my sort of thing. We were real hikers now. If they want to kill you and eat you, they can, and pretty much whenever they want. 20 of the best book quotes from Bill Bryson, “All over America today people would be dragging themselves to work, stuck in traffic jams, wreathed in exhaust smoke. What is it about maps? They just can’t stop walking, which kind of makes you wonder.”, “To tell you the truth, I’m amazed we’ve come this far,” he said, and I agreed. I know this sounds a trifle obvious, but it is amazing how little time we take to remark upon this singular and gratifying fact. In order to have quality journalism you need to have a good income stream, and no Internet model has produced a way of generating income that would pay for good-quality investigative journalism. The basic challenge of any book is you know you're going to be working on it for three or four years or more. 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. Four times I was honked at for having the temerity to proceed through town without the benefit of metal. Despite declining catches, New England fishermen continue to receive state and federal tax incentives that encourage them — in some cases all but compel them — to acquire bigger boats and to harvest the seas more intensively. We had become, we would forever be, mountain men.”, “Most of the time I am sunk in thought, but at some point on each walk there comes a moment when I look up and notice, with a kind of first-time astonishment, the amazing complex delicacy of the words, the casual ease with which elemental things come together to form a composition that is-whatever the season, wherever I put my besotted gaze-perfect.”, “What on earth would I do if four bears came into my camp? You could strike them on any hard surface and fling them at least fifteen feet and they wouldn't go out. 20 of the best book quotes from Bill Bryson #1 “All over America today people would be dragging themselves to work, stuck in traffic jams, wreathed in exhaust smoke. Give or take? The tearoom lady called me love. They are a vast featureless nowhere. Every Color of Light: A Book about the Sky. The number of people on whose cooperative efforts your eventual existence depends has risen to approximately 1,000,000,000,000,000,000, which is several thousand times the total number of people who have ever lived. If you go out on the Appalachian Trail, you have to bring so much more equipment - a tent, sleeping bag - but if you go hiking in England, or Europe, generally, towns and villages are near enough together at the end of the day you can always go to a nice little inn and have a hot bath and something to drink. You can't beat the phone company, you can't make a waiter see you until he's ready to see you, and you can't go home again. In those days kitchen matches were heavy-duty implements—more like signal flares than the weedy sticks we get today. “Notes From A Small Island: Journey Through Britain”, p.145, Random House. One-third o the landscape of the lower forty-eight states is covered in trees. 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. I hadn't been here twelve hours and already they loved me. More than 300 million people in the world speak English and the rest, it sometimes seems, try to. I had forgotten just how flat and empty it [middle America] is. I had always thought that once you grew up you could do anything you wanted - stay up all night or eat ice-cream straight out of the container. I painted myself into a corner by writing a whole book on this one period. And they are alive.”, “That stick [...] had become all but part of me. Your support helps us continue to discover and share incredible kids books! I don't want to know what people are talking about. There is always a little more toothpaste in the tube. This page is a collection of proverbs and quotes about accidents. It is a truly astounding sight when every tree in a landscape becomes individual, when each winding back highway and plump hillside is suddenly and infinitely splashed with every sharp shade that nature can bestow - flaming scarlet, lustrous gold, throbbing vermilion, fiery orange. The remarkable position in which we find ourselves is that we don't actually know what we actually know. 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. “A Short History of Nearly Everything”, p.278, Lulu Press, Inc, Bill Bryson (2010). It was clearly designed by a person who had spent his childhood crashing toy trains. Disassemble the cells of a sponge (by passing them through a sieve, for instance), then dump them into a solution, and they will find their way back together and build themselves into a sponge again. The sun nearly always shines. A love of books, of holding a book, turning its pages, looking at its pictures, and living its fascinating stories goes hand-in-hand with a love of learning. Australians are very unfair in this way. We use cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it. ”, “Black bears rarely attack. I don't know whether I'm misanthropic. “Neither here nor there: travels in Europe”, Harvill Secker, FaceBook post by Sometimes they do. Roads get wider and busier and less friendly to pedestrians. Book by Bill Bryson, June 6, 2000. So I can remember what it was like to be really hot, for instance, and I can remember what it was like when your barber shop and your local stores weren't air conditioned, so it was hot when you went in them and they propped the doors open. Here are some proverbs and quotes about adventures. ”, “Now here’s a thought to consider. We forget just how painfully dim the world was before electricity. A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003), Remarkable Last Words (or Near-Last Words). Everybody shops in malls - you don't find a sense of community in malls. 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. I'm very easily disappointed. "Virginia?" I was going for a walk in the woods. Bill Bryson from Mar 09, 2013, Bill Bryson (1990). I am more attracted to pubs and cafes. In any area of human endeavour, there is going to be mediocrity. 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. “In a Sunburned Country”, Broadway, Bill Bryson (1989). Bill Bryson – … When it is dark, you go to bed, and when it is light again you get up, and everything in between is just in between. A mile becomes a long way [...] fifty miles at the very limits of conception. Very little of what America does is actually bad, and I don't think it ever does anything anywhere that is intentionally bad. 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. Book by Bill Bryson. Chapter 4 (p. 51), 1997. I am genetically pre-disposed to wear a baseball cap, whereas most English people look wrong in a baseball cap. I once joked in a book that there are three things you can't do in life. I once joked in a book that there are three things you can't do in life. He abolished slavery. Take a moment from time to time to remember that you are alive. I sometimes think I cannot write another passage about a disappointing meal ever again, because I've done it so many times. Indeed, even when being beaten vigorously with two hands, as when lodged on the front of one's sweater, they seemed positively determined not to fail. “The Mother Tongue”, William Morrow Paperbacks, Bill Bryson (1991). And a really good story because he was this kid who grew up essentially as an orphan, you know, had a tough life, and then he became the most successful baseball player ever. ", Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Our motto is: Don't quote it if you can't source it. Accidents happen all the time. The known, safe and comfortable world. America is a great disappointment to me. Why is it, I wondered, that old people are always so self-centered and excitable? Sourced quotations by the American Author Bill Bryson (born in 1951) about people, time and years. To me, the greatest invention of my lifetime is the laptop computer and the fact that I can be working on a book and be in an airport lounge, in a hotel room, and continue working; I fire up my laptop, and I'm in exactly the same place I was when I left home - that, to me, is a miracle. Bill Bryson Quotes 1951 - US author, particularly known for his humorous travel memoirs. This is their planet, and we are on it only because they allow us to be. I don't want to go and start trying to make jokes in places like India, Tanzania or Iraq. It is a talent we have only barely begun to grasp. "I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away". "Being a pessimist is just such a gloomy way of looking at things, so I have to hope for the best - life wouldn't be worth living if we didn't have hope.