“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)

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Bill Bryson 112
American author 1951

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