Anyone who has read my books will know that I don't tend to use guides when I am travelling. It's not a pride thing, but it is certainly a fact. Bill Bryson More Quotes by Bill Bryson More Quotes From Bill Bryson I love the feeling of being anonymous in a city I've never been before. Bill Bryson cities feelings travel I do find London exciting. Much as I hate to agree with that tedious old git Samuel Johnson, and despite the pompous imbecility of his famous remark about when a man is tired of London he is tired of life...I can't dispute it. Bill Bryson tired hate men There is no reason why we shouldn't be able to split an infinitive, any more than we should forsake instant coffee and air travel because they weren't available to the Romans. Bill Bryson splits coffee air 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. Bill Bryson skeletons science mean England was full of words I'd never heard before - streaky bacon, short back and sides, Belisha beacon, serviettes, high tea, ice-cream cornet. Bill Bryson ice-cream sides tea In my day, the principal concerns of university students were sex, smoking dope, rioting and learning. Learning was something you did only when the first three weren't available. Bill Bryson university-students dope sex Because time moves more slowly in Kid World ... it goes on for decades ... It is adult life that is over in a twinkling. Bill Bryson adults kids moving 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. Bill Bryson sorry summer country Every living thing is an elaboration of a single original plan. As humans we are mere increments - each of us a musty archive of adjustments, adaptations, modifications and providential tinkerings stretching back to 3,8 billion years. Remarkably we are even quite closely related to fruit and vegetables. About half the chemical functions that take place in a banana are fundamentally the same as the chemical functions that place in you. It cannot be said too often: all life is one. That is, and I suspect will ever prove to be, the most profound true statement there is. Bill Bryson vegetables profound years Most scientists are without exception adorably quirky, and one of the ways of making it more accessible was to try to get readers interested in the person. Bill Bryson quirky trying way Taking a scenic route in Southeast Iowa is like talking about a good Barry Manilow album. You have to make certain allowances. Bill Bryson iowa albums talking I had to drive to Minneapolis once, and went on a back road just to see the country. But there was nothing to see. It's just flat and hot, and full of corn and soybeans and hogs. Every once in a while you come across a farm or some dead little town where the liveliest thing is the flies. Bill Bryson soybeans littles country It is always quietly thrilling to find yourself looking at a world you know well but have never seen from such an angle before. Bill Bryson finding-yourself angle world Columbus real achievement was managing to cross the ocean successfully in both directions. Though an accomplished enough mariner, he was not terribly good at a great deal else, especially geography, the skill that would seem most vital in an explorer. Bill Bryson ocean real discovery Finally, this being America, there is the constant possibility of murder. Bill Bryson possibility murder america My first rule of consumerism is never to buy anything you can't make your children carry. Bill Bryson consumerism children firsts Everything that has ever lived, plant or animal, dates its beginning from the same primordial twitch. At some point in an unimaginably distant past, some little bag of chemicals fidgeted to life. It absorbed some nutrients, gently pulsed, had a brief existence. This much may have happened many times before. But this ancestral packet did something additional and extraordinary. It cleaved itself and produced an heir. A tiny bundle of genetic material passed from one living entity to another, and has never stopped moving since. It was the moment of creation for us all. Bill Bryson animal past moving The average Southerner has the speech patterns of someone slipping in and out of consciousness. I can change my shoes and socks faster than most people in Mississippi can speak a sentence. Bill Bryson shoes average people 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. Bill Bryson would-be america people There is no such thing, incidentally, as one kudo. Bill Bryson
