Bill Bryson quotes - page 4

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)
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. View quote
Bill Bryson
Excuse me, but I just have to say this. You are more stupid than a paramecium. View quote
Bill Bryson
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. View quote
Bill Bryson
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. View quote
Bill Bryson
America was entering the age not just of the automobile but of the retarded attention span. View quote
Bill Bryson
... 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. View quote
Bill Bryson
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. View quote
Bill Bryson
"Virginia?” he said, as if I had asked him if there was anywhere local we could get a dose of syphilis. View quote
Bill Bryson
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." View quote
Bill Bryson
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)
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. View quote
Bill Bryson
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. View quote
Bill Bryson
For forty years or so this was the world headquarters of conspicuous consumption. View quote
Bill Bryson
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. View quote
Bill Bryson
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. View quote
Bill Bryson
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." View quote
Bill Bryson
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. View quote
Bill Bryson
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. View quote
Bill Bryson
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. View quote
Bill Bryson
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)
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. View quote
Bill Bryson
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. View quote
Bill Bryson
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. View quote
Bill Bryson
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. View quote
Bill Bryson