Bill Bryson Quotes (112 quotes, page 2)

“It would be lovely to think I had become a genius," he smiles, "but the fact is that I've forgotten most of it. Occasionally I can be watching University Challenge and a stray fact emerges from the recesses of my subconscious that I didn't know I knew, but for the most part I'm as vague on the details as I ever was.”

Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson: The accidental chancellor (November 15, 2005)

Love , Smile , Thinking , Universe

“I remember being profoundly amazed that anyone would suppose that a little wooden desk would provide a safe haven in the event of an atomic bomb being dropped on Des Moines. But evidently they all took the matter seriously, for even the teacher, Miss Squat Little Fat Thing, was inserted under her desk, too—or at least as much of her as she could get under, which was perhaps 40 percent. Once I realized that no one was watching, I elected not to take part. I already knew how to get under a desk and was confident that this was not a skill that would ever need refreshing.”

Bill Bryson

Source: The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006), p. 117

Confidence , Teachers , Parting

“If the mattress stains were anything to go by, a previous user had not so much suffered from incontinence as rejoiced in it. He had evidently included the pillow in his celebrations.”

Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Source: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 6 (p. 81)

Suffering

“It is natural human impulse to think of evolution as a long chain of improvements, of a never-ending advance towards largeness and complexity — in a word, towards us. We flatter ourselves. Most of the real diversity in evolution has been small-scale. We large things are just flukes — an interesting side branch.”

Bill Bryson book A Short History of Nearly Everything

Page 311
A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003)

Nature , Thinking

“Every dog on the face of the earth wants me dead.”

Bill Bryson

In a Sunburned Country (US), Down Under (UK) (2000)

Dogs , Dead

“And then suddenly I would realize that I couldn’t remember, hadn’t actually consciously experienced, any of the last forty-seven properties I had visited, and didn’t know if I had left a paper or just walked up to the door, stood for a moment like an underfunctioning automaton, and turned around and walked away again. It is not easy to describe the sense of self-disappointment that comes with reaching the end of your route and finding that there are sixteen undelivered papers in your bag and you don’t have the least idea—not the least idea—to whom they should have gone. I spent much of my prepubescent years first walking an enormous newspaper route, then revisiting large parts of it. Sometimes twice.”

Bill Bryson

Source: The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006), p. 122

Disappointment , Idea , Sense , Parting

“According to an opinion poll, 13 per cent of women in the United States cannot say whether they wear their tights under their knickers or over them. That's something like 12 million women walking around in a state of chronic foundation garment uncertainty. Perhaps because I so seldom wear ladies' clothing I don't fully appreciate the challenge involved, but I am almost certain that if I did wear tights with knickers I would know which was on top. More to the point, if a stranger with a clipboard came up to me in the street and asked me how my underwear was configured, I don't believe I would tell him that I didn't know.”

Bill Bryson

I'm a Stranger Here Myself (US), Notes From a Big Country (UK) (1998)

Women , Clothes

“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. You can do this to them over and over, and they will doggedly reassemble because, like you and me and every other living thing, they have one overwhelming impulse: to continue to be.”

Bill Bryson book A Short History of Nearly Everything

Page 380
A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003)

Way

“A friend Alan and I ended up in an Outback pub in a place called Daly Waters and apparently, he says, in the course of this very lively evening we spent there I offered to do a house swap with a family from Korea. We weren't sure whether they were from North Korea or South Korea.”

Bill Bryson

Interview with Stanford's Newsletter (June 2001)

Family , Water , Housing

“Excuse me, but I just have to say this. You are more stupid than a paramecium.”

Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Source: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 8 (p. 106)

Stupidity

“I assume he was descended from apes like all the rest of us, but clearly in his case it had been a fairly gentle slope.”

Bill Bryson

The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America (1989)

“It was impossible to determine what he was saying, but I imagined he was telling all those present that they were nongs and maggots. I decided I quite liked watching the news with the sound off.”

Bill Bryson

In a Sunburned Country (US), Down Under (UK) (2000)

Imagination

“America was entering the age not just of the automobile but of the retarded attention span.”

Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Source: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 18 (p. 234)

Age

“… I had some suggestions [about fencing]. I thought that you could encourage surprise attacks. I thought that would be very good. I kind of liked the idea of arming one guy with a conventional sword but giving the other a pikestaff. My favourite was the idea of blindfolding one of the competitors or blindfolding them both and spinning them around a bit so they were a little bit unstable and then just pushing them towards each other. It would make each match go on a bit longer.”

Bill Bryson

Interview with Stanford's Newsletter (June 2001)

Guy , Idea

“[I relaxed] my customary aversion to consulting a book by anyone so immensely pratty as to put "Ph. D." after his name (I don't put Ph. D. after my name on my books, after all — and not just because I don't have one).”

Bill Bryson

Bryson was later awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Durham
I'm a Stranger Here Myself (US), Notes From a Big Country (UK) (1998)

Books

“My father liked Iowa. He lived his whole life in the state, and is even now working his way through eternity there, in Glendale Cemetery in Des Moines.”

Bill Bryson

The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America (1989)

Life , Way

“Nearly a quarter of American men were in the Armed forces [in 1968]. The rest were in school, in prison, or were George W. Bush.”

Bill Bryson

Source: The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006), p. 193

Men , School

““Virginia?” he said, as if I had asked him if there was anywhere local we could get a dose of syphilis.”

Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Source: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 8 (p. 108)

“As Edward P. Tryon of Columbia University once put it: "In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our universe is simply one of those things that happen from time to time." To which adds Guth: "Although the creation of a universe might be very unlikely, Tryon emphasized that no one had counted the failed attempts."”

Bill Bryson book A Short History of Nearly Everything

On the Big Bang
A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003)

Question , Universe , Time

“We couldn't place their accents but we thought the smaller one might be Australian since he seemed so at home down under.”

Bill Bryson book Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe

Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe (1991)

Home

“By almost universal agreement, the most vague and ineffectual of all [Presidents] was Millard Fillmore, who succeeded to the office in 1850 upon the death of Zachary Taylor, and spent the next three years demonstrating how the country would have been run if they had just propped Taylor up in a chair with cushions.”

Bill Bryson

I'm a Stranger Here Myself (US), Notes From a Big Country (UK) (1998)

Death , Universe , Country

“It would be a great abuse of my position to write that it was Northwest Airlines that treated us in this shoddy and inexcusable way, so I won't.”

Bill Bryson

I'm a Stranger Here Myself (US), Notes From a Big Country (UK) (1998)

Way

“Three things alone are certain when you venture into a loft: that you will crack your head on a beam at least twice, that you will get cobwebs draped over your face, and that you will not find what you went looking for.”

Bill Bryson

I'm a Stranger Here Myself (US), Notes From a Big Country (UK) (1998)

“Blackpool's illuminations are nothing if not splendid, and they are not splendid.”

Bill Bryson book Notes from a Small Island

Notes from a Small Island (1995)

“I knew more things in the first ten years of my life than I believe I have known at any time since. I knew everything there was to know about our house for a start. I knew what was written on the undersides of tables and what the view was like from the tops of bookcases and wardrobes. I knew what was to be found at the back of every closet, which beds had the most dust balls beneath them, which ceilings the most interesting stains, where exactly the patterns in wallpaper repeated. I knew how to cross every room in the house without touching the floor, where my father kept his spare change and how much you could safely take without his noticing (one-seventh of the quarters, one-fifth of the nickels and dimes, as many of the pennies as you could carry). I knew how to relax in an armchair in more than one hundred positions and on the floor in approximately seventy- five more. I knew what the world looked like when viewed through a Jell-O lens. I knew how things tasted—damp washcloths, pencil ferrules, coins and buttons, almost anything made of plastic that was smaller than, say, a clock radio, mucus of every variety of course—in a way that I have more or less forgotten now. I knew and could take you at once to any illustration of naked women anywhere in our house, from a Rubens painting of fleshy chubbos in Masterpieces of World Painting to a cartoon by Peter Arno in the latest issue of The New Yorker to my father’s small private library of girlie magazines in a secret place known only to him, me, and 111 of my closest friends in his bedroom.”

Bill Bryson

Source: The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006), p. 36

Life , Women , Secret , World

“For forty years or so this was the world headquarters of conspicuous consumption.”

Bill Bryson

about Newport, Rhode Island (RI)
The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America (1989)

World

“Let’s not lose our perspective here. The Smokies achieved their natural splendor without the guidance of a national park service and don’t actually need it now.”

Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Source: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 7 (p. 94)

Nature

“Now here’s a thought to consider. Every twenty minutes on the Appalachian Trail, Katz and I walked farther than the average American does in a week. For 93 percent of all trips outside the home, for whatever distance or whatever purpose, 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. That’s ridiculous.”

Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Source: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 11 (p. 128)

Cars , Home

“I went round to all these minority sports and I couldn't really appreciate them. Fencing, for example, is just "click, click, click" and it is over. Then they retire. Then they go again "On guard — click, click, click" and it is over again. You just think, "what is this sport?" I thought this is really boring and then I went to Judo and it was just the same thing. These two guys just endlessly circling each other, acting as if what they are trying to do is take the others shirt off without him realising this is what they are trying to do. I just thought "what is this? I don't understand this at all". Then I went to table tennis, which obviously I could identify with because I had played it myself — not quite at Olympic standard — but I could understand it. It suddenly became clear to me that these people really are so far beyond anything I could ever dream of becoming. I felt really terrible because I hadn't appreciated the fencers. The reason I couldn't follow them was because they were so damn good. Their hands were so quick that I couldn't see what was going on.”

Bill Bryson

Interview with Stanford's Newsletter (June 2001)

People , Dreams , Guy , Understanding

“There was a lot more joking going on when I was a kid. My dad, for instance, specialised in puns and I remember once we were on vacation in California and we were driving along the San Andreas Fault and he threw a quarter out of the window into the Fault because he said "he had always wanted to be generous to a fault."”

Bill Bryson

Interview with Stanford's Newsletter (June 2001)

“For a long time it puzzled me how something so expensive, so leading edge, could be so useless. And then it occurred to me that a computer is a stupid machine with the ability to do incredibly smart things, while computer programmers are smart people with the ability to do incredibly stupid things. They are, in short, a perfect match.”

Bill Bryson

http://paws.kettering.edu/~jhuggins/humor/stupid.html
I'm a Stranger Here Myself (US), Notes From a Big Country (UK) (1998)

People , Stupidity , Time , Perfection

“I really was more intent on getting out of Iowa than everybody else. I just felt I didn't quite fit in exactly, the way other people did. Then I came here and discovered by living in Britain that being a foreigner is really a treat. It is such a great position to be in. When things are going well you can step forward and take part in the ceremonies and everything is great. And when things are not going well, being entirely hypothetical here, if for example your national football team got beat by Germany, you can stand back and say what a shame.”

Bill Bryson

Interview with Stanford's Newsletter (June 2001)

People , Way , Football , Parting

“Wow, look at all the places you can park,” he said, as if for all these years he had been cruising endlessly, unable to terminate a journey. For about a year the most dangerous place to drive in Des Moines was the parking lot of Merle Hay Mall because of all the cars speeding at joyous random angles across its boundless blacktop without reflecting that other happy souls might be doing likewise.”

Bill Bryson

Source: The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006), p. 182

Cars , Soul , Speed , Happiness

“So without an original or helpful thought in my head, I just sat for some minutes and watched these poor disconnected people shuffle past. Then I did what most white Australians do. I read my newspaper and drank my coffee and didn't see them anymore.”

Bill Bryson

In a Sunburned Country (US), Down Under (UK) (2000)

People , Coffee , Reading , Past

“I watched a rerun on television of a 1960s comedy programme called "Mr Ed", which was about a talking horse. Judging by the quality of the jokes, I would guess that Mr Ed wrote his own material.”

Bill Bryson

The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America (1989)

Horse

“I don't care how paranoid and irrational this makes me sound, but I know for a fact that the people of Paris want me dead.”

Bill Bryson book Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe

Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe (1991)

People , Dead

“Normally, your wife can hear things that no one else on earth can hear. She can hear a dab of jam fall onto a carpet two rooms away. She can hear spilled coffee being furtively mopped up with a good bathtowel. She can hear dirt being tracked across a clean floor. She can hear you just thinking about doing something you shouldn't do. But get yourself stuck in a loft hatch and suddenly it is as if she has been placed in a soundproof chamber.”

Bill Bryson

I'm a Stranger Here Myself (US), Notes From a Big Country (UK) (1998)

Coffee , Thinking

“All that can really be said is that at some indeterminate point in the very distant past, for reasons unknown, there came the moment known to science as t = 0. We were on our way.”

Bill Bryson book A Short History of Nearly Everything

On the moment of creation; page 10
A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003)

Way , Distant , Science , Past

“Much of the tablecloth was a series of grey smudges outlined in a large, irregular patch of yellow that looked distressingly like a urine stain.”

Bill Bryson book Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe

Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe (1991)

“…Our guide announces that he's going to take us to the coldest place on Earth, where particles are cooled to within a fraction of a Kelvin. "Ah," says Bryson. "That must be Donald Rumsfeld's heart."”

Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson: The accidental chancellor (November 15, 2005)

Heart

“I had to calm down because a state trooper pulled up alongside me at a traffic light and began looking at me with that sort of casual disdain you often get when you give a dangerously stupid person a gun and a squad car.”

Bill Bryson

The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America (1989)

Stupidity , Cars , Light , Personality

“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. Today the fishermen of Massachusetts are reduced to fishing the hideous hagfish, for which there is a slight market in the Far East, but even their numbers are now falling.”

Bill Bryson book A Short History of Nearly Everything

Page 285
A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003)

Fish , Sea

“The Smokies seem to be in the process of losing most of their mussels. The National Park Service actually has something of a tradition of making things extinct. Bryce Canyon National Park is perhaps the most interesting—certainly the most striking—example. It was founded in 1923 and in less than half a century under the Park Service’s stewardship lost seven species of mammal—the white-tailed jackrabbit, prairie dog, pronghorn antelope, flying squirrel, beaver, red fox, and spotted skunk. Quite an achievement when you consider that these animals had survived in Bryce Canyon for tens of millions of years before the Park Service took an interest in them. Altogether, forty-two species of mammal have disappeared from America’s national parks this century.”

Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Source: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 7 (p. 92)

Dogs , Animals , Flying

“Making models was reputed to be hugely enjoyable… But when you got the kit home and opened the box the contents turned out to be of a uniform leaden gray or olive green, consisting of perhaps sixty thousand tiny parts, some no larger than a proton, all attached in some organic, inseparable way to plastic stalks like swizzle sticks. The tubes of glue by contrast were the size of large pastry tubes. No matter how gently you depressed them they would blurp out a pint or so of a clear viscous goo whose one instinct was to attach itself to some foreign object—a human finger, the living-room drapes, the fur of a passing animal—and become an infinitely long string. Any attempt to break the string resulted in the creation of more strings. Within moments you would be attached to hundreds of sagging strands, all connected to something that had nothing to do with model airplanes or World War II. The only thing the glue wouldn’t stick to, interestingly, was a piece of plastic model; then it just became a slippery lubricant that allowed any two pieces of model to glide endlessly over each other, never drying. The upshot was that after about forty minutes of intensive but troubled endeavor you and your immediate surroundings were covered in a glistening spiderweb of glue at the heart of which was a gray fuselage with one wing on upside down and a pilot accidentally but irremediably attached by his flying cap to the cockpit ceiling. Happily by this point you were so high on the glue that you didn’t give a shit about the pilot, the model, or anything else.”

Bill Bryson The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid

Source: The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006), p. 81

Home , War , Box , Heart

“The makers of sneakers also thoughtfully pocked the soles with numberless crevices, craters, chevrons, mazes, crop circles, and other rubbery hieroglyphs, so that when you stepped in a moist pile of dog shit, as you most assuredly did within three bounds of leaving the house, they provided additional absorbing hours of pastime while you cleaned them out with a stick, gagging quietly but oddly content.”

Bill Bryson The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid

Source: The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006), p. 34

Dogs , Housing

“Bryson. You’ve got three kinds of chromosomes: X, Y and fuck-head.”

Bill Bryson book Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe

Katz
Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe (1991)

“A sign in the yard of a church next door said CHRIST IS THE ANSWER.”

Bill Bryson

The question, of course, is: What do you say when you strike your thumb with a hammer?
The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America (1989)

Christ

Bill Bryson Quotes
page 2

Bill Bryson Quotes

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Bill Bryson Quotes

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