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Bill Bryson quotes - page 4
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
Excuse me, but I just have to say this. You are more stupid than a paramecium.
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.
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.
Bill Bryson
America was entering the age not just of the automobile but of the retarded attention span.
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.
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.
Bill Bryson
"Virginia?” he said, as if I had asked him if there was anywhere local we could get a dose of syphilis.
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."
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.
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.
Bill Bryson
For forty years or so this was the world headquarters of conspicuous consumption.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Bill Bryson
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
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