Bill Bryson Quotes
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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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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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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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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 plan to write another science book, but I don't plan not to. I do enjoy writing histories, and taking subjects that are generally dull and trying to make them interesting.
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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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Cheapness is a great virtue.
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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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For forty years or so this was the world headquarters of conspicuous consumption.
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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 understand cricket - what's going on, the scoring - but I can't understand why.
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I have made a career of bumbling around places, stumbling on landmarks and generally being quite haphazard and shambolic about the way I go about things.
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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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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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I'm definitely an American, because I grew up here. But I've lived very happily in Britain.
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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 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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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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Bryson. You’ve got three kinds of chromosomes: X, Y and fuck-head. - Katz
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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 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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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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There was a lot more joking going on when I was a kid. My dad, for instance, specialised in puns and I remember once we were on vacation in California and we were driving along the San Andreas Fault and he threw a quarter out of the window into the Fault because he said 'he had always wanted to be generous to a fault'.
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The thing about the Army Corps of Engineers is that they don’t build things very well.