Bill Bryson Quotes
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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 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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Scientists tend to be unappreciated in the world at large, but you can hardly overstate the importance of the work they do.
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There is the odd exception, like Albert Einstein, but as a breed, scientists tend not be very good at presenting themselves.
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Book tours are really kind of fun. You get to stay in nice hotels, you are driven everywhere in big silver cars, you are treated as if you are much more important than you are, you can eat steak three times a day at someone else's expense, and you get to talk endlessly about yourself for weeks at a stretch.
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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'm a great believer that you had to do everything you've done to have got to where you are.
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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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'Tell me, did they specify ’asshole’ on the job description, or did you take a course?'
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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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For forty years or so this was the world headquarters of conspicuous consumption.
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I understand cricket - what's going on, the scoring - but I can't understand why.
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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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Bryson. You’ve got three kinds of chromosomes: X, Y and fuck-head. - Katz
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The world at night, for much of history, was a very dark place indeed.
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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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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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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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Absolute brain size does not tell you everything - or possibly sometimes even much. Elephants and whales both have brains larger than ours, but you wouldn't have much trouble outwitting them in contract negotiations.