Quotes by Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson

American-British author

Lived from: 1951 -

Category: Writers (Contemporary)

Born: 8 december 1951

Quotes 1 till 20 of 59.

1 2 3 Next 
  • Clearly, some time ago makers and consumers of American junk food passed jointly through some kind of sensibility barrier in the endless quest for new taste sensations. Now they are a little like those desperate junkies who have tried every known drug and are finally reduced to mainlining toilet bowl cleanser in an effort to get still higher.
    ― Bill Bryson
    - +
    +1
  • The whole of the global economy is based on supplying the cravings of two per cent of the world's population.
    ― Bill Bryson
    - +
    +1
  • To me, the greatest invention of my lifetime is the laptop computer and the fact that I can be working on a book and be in an airport lounge, in a hotel room, and continue working; I fire up my laptop, and I'm in exactly the same place I was when I left home - that, to me, is a miracle.
    ― Bill Bryson
    - +
    +1
  • We forget just how painfully dim the world was before electricity. A candle, a good candle, provides barely a hundredth of the illumination of a single 100 watt light bulb.
    ― Bill Bryson
    - +
    +1
  • 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.
    Interview with Stanfords Newsletter (June 2001)
    ― Bill Bryson
    - +
     0
  • A world without newspapers or a world where the newspapers are purely electronic and you read them on a screen is not a very appealing world.
    ― Bill Bryson
    - +
     0
  • Above all, what is oddest to the outsider is that Aborigines just aren't there.
    In a Sunburned Country (US) / Down Under (UK) (2000)
    ― Bill Bryson
    - +
     0
  • All that can really be said is that at some indeterminate point in the very distant past, for reasons unknown, there came the moment known to science as t = 0. We were on our way.
    A Short History of Nearly Everything On the moment of creation; page 10
    ― Bill Bryson
    - +
     0
  • All the things that are part of your heritage make you British - that makes this country what it is. It's part of your history. And here, unlike America, it's still living history.
    ― Bill Bryson
    - +
     0
  • America is an outstandingly dangerous place. Consider this: every year in New Hampshire a dozen or more people are killed crashing their cars into moose. Now correct me if I am wrong, but this is not something that is likely to happen to you on the way home from Sainsbury's.
    Im a Stranger Here Myself (US) / Notes From a Big Country (UK) (1998)
    ― Bill Bryson
    - +
     0
  • An awful lot of England is slowly eroding, in ways that I find really distressing, and an awful lot of it is the hedgerows... We're reaching the point where a lot of the English countryside looks just like Iowa - just kind of open space.
    ― Bill Bryson
    - +
     0
  • And I find chopsticks frankly distressing. Am I alone in thinking it odd that a people ingenious enough to invent paper, gunpowder, kites and any number of other useful objects, and who have a noble history extending back 3,000 years haven't yet worked out that a pair of knitting needles is no way to capture food?
    ― Bill Bryson
    - +
     0
  • And then it occurred to me that a computer is a stupid machine with the ability to do incredibly smart things, while computer programmers are smart people with the ability to do incredibly stupid things. They are, in short, a perfect match.
    ― Bill Bryson
    - +
     0
  • Blackpool's illuminations are nothing if not splendid, and they are not splendid.
    Notes from a Small Island
    ― Bill Bryson
    - +
     0
  • Boston's freeway system is insane. It was clearly designed by a person who had spent his childhood crashing toy trains.
    ― Bill Bryson
    - +
     0
  • Britain still has the most reliably beautiful countryside of anywhere in the world. I would hate to be part of the generation that allowed that to be lost.
    ― Bill Bryson
    - +
     0
  • Coming back to your native land after an absence of many years is a surprisingly unsettling business, a little like waking from a long coma. Time, you discover, has wrought changes that leave you feeling mildly foolish and out of touch.
    ― Bill Bryson
    - +
     0
  • 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
    - +
     0
  • 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.
    Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe
    ― Bill Bryson
    - +
     0
  • 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.
    The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America
    ― Bill Bryson
    - +
     0
1 2 3 Next 
All Bill Bryson famous quotes and sayings you will always find on greatest-quotations.com

Popular subjects

Popular authors

Questions and Answers

What are the most famous quotes from Bill Bryson?

The two most famous quotes from Bill Bryson are:

  • "Clearly, some time ago makers and consumers of American junk food passed jointly through some kind of sensibility barrier in the endless quest for new taste sensations. Now they are a little like those desperate junkies who have tried every known drug and are finally reduced to mainlining toilet bowl cleanser in an effort to get still higher."
  • "The whole of the global economy is based on supplying the cravings of two per cent of the world's population."

When did Bill Bryson live?

Bill Bryson is still alive and was born in 1951.