Bill Bryson Quotes
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The best that can be said for Norwegian television is that it gives you the sensation of a coma without the worry and inconvenience.
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Open your refrigerator door, and you summon forth more light than the total amount enjoyed by most households in the 18th century. The world at night, for much of history, was a very dark place indeed.
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Cheapness is a great virtue.
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I can't fix the world. If you want to make a difference in life, you have to direct your energies in a focused way.
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The world at night, for much of history, was a very dark place indeed.
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I don't care how paranoid and irrational this makes me sound, but I know for a fact that the people of Paris want me dead.
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Yes, U.S. travelers dress better. The British are always so conspicuous in hot climates. They don't seem to wear shorts. American men seem to be comfortable wearing hot-weather clothing.
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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.
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I'm a great believer that you had to do everything you've done to have got to where you are.
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...Our guide announces that he's going to take us to the coldest place on Earth, where particles are cooled to within a fraction of a Kelvin. 'Ah,' says Bryson. 'That must be Donald Rumsfeld's heart.'
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I grew up, really, in the days before air conditioning. So I can remember what it was like to be really hot, for instance, and I can remember what it was like when your barber shop and your local stores weren't air conditioned, so it was hot when you went in them and they propped the doors open.
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I don't want to go and start trying to make jokes in places like India, Tanzania or Iraq. Afghanistan is not a funny place.
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We couldn't place their accents but we thought the smaller one might be Australian since he seemed so at home down under.
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I understand cricket - what's going on, the scoring - but I can't understand why.
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For forty years or so this was the world headquarters of conspicuous consumption.
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America was entering the age not just of the automobile but of the retarded attention span.
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A sign in the yard of a church next door said CHRIST IS THE ANSWER. (The question, of course, is: What do you say when you strike your thumb with a hammer?)
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The first book I did - the first successful book - was a kind of a travel book, and publishers in Britain encouraged me to do more.
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I've been wanting to do a book about baseball for the longest time, and nobody will let me do it. It's the one thing from America I really miss.
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When you tell an Iowan a joke, you can see a kind of race going on between his brain and his expression.
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Bryson. You’ve got three kinds of chromosomes: X, Y and fuck-head. - Katz
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Boston's freeway system is insane. It was clearly designed by a person who had spent his childhood crashing toy trains.
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I sometimes think I cannot write another passage about a disappointing meal ever again, because I've done it so many times.
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I'm definitely an American, because I grew up here. But I've lived very happily in Britain.