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Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson Quotes

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Famous Bill Bryson Quotes

“Every atom you possess has almost certainly passed through several stars and been part of millions of organisms on its way to becoming you. We are each so atomically numerous and so vigorously recycled at death that a significant number of our atoms - up to a billion for each of us, it has been suggested - probably once belonged to Shakespeare. A billion more each came from Buddha and Genghis Khan and Beethoven, and any other historical figure you care to name. So we are all reincarnations - though short-lived ones. When we die, our atoms will disassemble and move off to find new uses elsewhere - as part of a leaf or other human being or drop of dew.”

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Book:A Short History of Nearly Everything
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“To my surprise, I felt a certain springy keenness. I was ready to hike. I had waited months for this day, after all, even if it had been mostly with foreboding. I wanted to see what was out there. All over America today people would be dragging themselves to work, stuck in traffic jams, wreathed in exhaust smoke. I was going for a walk in the woods. I was more than ready for this.”

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Author:Bill Bryson
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“As James Surowiecki noted in a New Yorker article, given a choice between developing antibiotics that people will take every day for two weeks and antidepressants that people will take every day for ever, drug companies not surprisingly opt for the latter. Although a few antibiotics have been toughened up a bit, the pharmaceutical industry hasn't given us an entirely new antibiotic since the 1970s.”

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Author:Bill Bryson
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“When I was growing up I used to think that the best thing about coming from Des Moines was that it meant you didn't come from anywhere else in Iowa. By Iowa standards, Des Moines is a mecca of cosmopolitanism, a dynamic hub of wealth and education, where people wear three-piece suits and dark socks, often simultaneously.”

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Book:The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-town America
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“But that's the glory of foreign travel, as far as I am concerned. I don't want to know what people are talking about. I can't think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can't read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can't even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsWantYearsI CanCountryWholeInterestingExistenceTalkingWonderFiveGreaterStreetsTravelGloryConcernedCrossesSeriesIgnorantWanderMemorableFive YearsWhere You AreTravel WritingChildlikeGreat TravelFive Year OldsLife Is An AdventureLife AdventureWant To TravelChildlike WonderForeign Travel
Book:Neither here nor there: travels in Europe
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“But I got a great deal else from the experience. I learned to pitch a tent and sleep beneath the stars. For a brief, proud period I was slender and fit. I gained a profound respect for the wilderness and nature and the benign dark power of woods. I understand now, in a way I never did before, the colossal scale of the world. I found patience and fortitude that I didn't know I had. I discovered an America that millions of people scarcely know exists. I made a friend. I came home.”

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Author:Bill Bryson
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“And I find chopsticks frankly distressing. Am I alone in thinking it odd that a people ingenious enough to invent paper, gunpowder, kites and any number of other useful objects, and who have a noble history extending back 3,000 years haven't yet worked out that a pair of knitting needles is no way to capture food?”

PeopleThinkingWayYearsEnoughNumbersHavensObjectsFoodPaperNobleOddPairsCaptureNeedlesIngeniousExtendingKnittingKitesDistressingGunpowderChinese FoodChopsticksKnitting Needles
Book:Notes From A Small Island: Journey Through Britain
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“The people are immensely likable— cheerful, extrovert, quick-witted, and unfailingly obliging. Their cities are safe and clean and nearly always built on water. They have a society that is prosperous, well ordered, and instinctively egalitarian. The food is excellent. The beer is cold. The sun nearly always shines. There is coffee on every corner. Life doesn't get much better than this.”

PeopleWellsWaterCitiesSunColdSafeBuiltShiningCleanCornersCoffeeBeerExcellentCheerfulProsperousExtrovertsQuick Witted
Book:In a Sunburned Country
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“So, if people didn’t settle down to take up farming, why then did they embark on this entirely new way of living? We have no idea – or actually, we have lots of ideas, but we don’t know if any of them are right. According to Felipe Fernández-Armesto, at least thirty-eight theories have been put forward to explain why people took to living in communities: that they were driven to it by climatic change, or by a wish to stay near their dead, or by a powerful desire to brew and drink beer, which could only be indulged by staying in one place.”

PeopleIfsKnowsWayHas BeensIdeasDesireWishCommunityPowerfulTheoryDrinkEightDrivenBeerNo IdeaSettlingThirtyStayingNew WaysFarmingSettling DownFernsThirty Eight
Author:Bill Bryson
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“It is not as if farming brought a great improvement in living standards either. A typical hunter-gatherer enjoyed a more varied diet and consumed more protein and calories than settled people, and took in five times as much viatmin C as the average person today.”

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Book:At Home: A Short History of Private Life
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“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.”

PeopleLongAbilityPerfectTechnologyStupidComputerLong TimeSmartMachinesEdgesUselessExpensiveProgrammingProgrammersComputer ProgrammingComputer ScienceProgramming LanguagesSmart PeopleStupid ThingsComputer LanguagePuzzledComputer ProgrammersProgramming FunnyPerfect Match
Author:Bill Bryson
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“Suddenly, in the space of a moment, I realized what it was that I loved about Britain - which is to say, all of it. Every last bit of it, good and bad - old churches, country lanes, people saying 'Mustn't grumble,' and 'I'm terribly sorry but,' people apologizing to ME when I conk them with a careless elbow, milk in bottles, beans on toast, haymaking in June, seaside piers, Ordnance Survey maps, tea and crumpets, summer showers and foggy winter evenings - every bit of it.”

PeopleCountryMomentsLastsBitsChurchSpaceSummerSorryWinterI RealizedEveningTeaBritainMapsBottlesMilkApologizingShowersGood And BadJuneCarelessLanesBeansSurveysToastsElbowsPiersOld ChurchesCrumpetsOrdnance
Author:Bill Bryson
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“It isn't easy to become a fossil. ... Only about one bone in a billion, it is thought, becomes fossilized. If that is so, it means that the complete fossil legacy of all the Americans alive today - that's 270 million people with 206 bones each - will only be about 50 bones, one-quarter of a complete skeleton. That's not to say, of course, that any of these bones will ever actually be found.”

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Author:Bill Bryson
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