Bill Bryson Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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I was never offended that people underestimated me because of my appearance or that they thought I was pretty and discouraged me from fighting because they didn't want me to risk hurting my looks.
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Both my parents are immigrants. I've seen different struggles they've had. There's a reason you don't see me using accents. I don't do impressions of my folks. When I'm doing a crappy impression of my folks, and you're laughing, I'm thinking, 'When my parents talk to people, when they walk away do people do impressions of them? Do they laugh?'
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As a legal matter, my mother is an American citizen by birth.
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I'll give it a shot. But I don't know that a year from now I'm going to be here. Nobody does.
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I think a lot more people are starting to understand the power of YouTube.
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I did grow up in a military family but lacked the perspective to grasp the cognitive dissonance carried by most people who serve in the armed forces or the circumstances that push lots of folks into the military. I don't blame G.I. Joe or Rambo for that atmosphere, but they certainly reflected the final stage of a two generation cultural myth.
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I definitely got to a point where I realize how unusual it is to be able to play large, sold-out shows 30 years into a rock and roll career. I don't take it for granted.
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Limitations can be hugely creative and hugely inspiring - so long as they are the ones you choose for yourself. I will not allow anyone to take anything off my palette, but if I do, then within that, I can be creative.
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You learn to read the audiences after a while, and there are all different kinds of gigs.
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Many laws as certainly make bad men, as bad men make many laws.
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I'd see an old person on the street and start crying. I couldn't understand how people could cope, knowing they only had so long left. It would be like dominoes and then the last one fell and I'm a little heap on the floor. Doctors put me on anti-depressants for a couple of years.
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I have a terrible tendency to lick my fingers when I cook. So much so that I got a telling off from my pastry teacher years ago, who said it would hinder my prospects.
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Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.
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To me, writing an ongoing series feels like driving a freight train downhill. All you can do is steer and pray.
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An audience can really lift you right up off the stage.
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The day you decide to pursue your dreams, don't forget that this is a game you don't enter to compete, but to win. And there will always be someone booing you in the stands, and everything you accomplish could be jeered and hissed at. This is a game between two that you have to win for the people who came to watch you be triumphant.
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I have the best husband a wife could possibly have. He's the best father my children could have.
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In my early professional years I was asking the question: How can I treat, or cure, or change this person? Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth?
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When good friends praise a gifted person he often appears to be delighted with them out of politeness and goodwill, but in reality he feels indifferent.
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She was having some difficulty piecing together exactly why she deserved to be in this place, but she wasn't stupid enough to deny that in the end life was cruel and didn't pay attention to what was fair.
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Generally, I read nonfiction. There's very little fiction that I enjoy enough to spend my time reading. I am generally a nonfiction guy.
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To strive for the common prosperity and happiness of all nations, as well as the security and wellbeing of our subjects, is the solemn obligation which has been handed down by our imperial ancestors and which lies close to our heart.
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Our cultural instinct is to wait to get picked. No one is going to pick you. Pick yourself.
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Excuse me, but I just have to say this. You are more stupid than a paramecium.
