Quotes by Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson

American-British author

Lived from: 1951 -

Category: Writers (Contemporary)

Born: 8 december 1951

Quotes 21 till 40 of 59.

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  • I'd turn on the lights, but they're blown. I'd offer you a seat, but there isn't one. I'd offer you a drink from the minibar, but there doesn't appear to be one. It certainly is basic. Basic? It's a bloody cell!
    In a Sunburned Country (US) / Down Under (UK) (2000)
    ― Bill Bryson
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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.
    ― Bill Bryson
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  • If the mattress stains were anything to go by, a previous user had not so much suffered from incontinence as rejoiced in it. He had evidently included the pillow in his celebrations.
    A Walk in the Woods
    ― Bill Bryson
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  • If you can imagine a man having a vasectomy without anesthetic to the sound of frantic sitar-playing, you will have some idea what popular Turkish music is like.
    ― Bill Bryson
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  • If you drive to, say, Shenandoah National Park, or the Great Smoky Mountains, you'll get some appreciation for the scale and beauty of the outdoors. When you walk into it, then you see it in a completely different way. You discover it in a much slower, more majestic sort of way.
    ― Bill Bryson
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  • If you go out on the Appalachian Trail, you have to bring so much more equipment - a tent, sleeping bag - but if you go hiking in England, or Europe, generally, towns and villages are near enough together at the end of the day you can always go to a nice little inn and have a hot bath and something to drink.
    ― Bill Bryson
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  • In France, a chemist named Pilatre de Rozier tested the flammability of hydrogen by gulping a mouthful and blowing across an open flame, proving at a stroke that hydrogen is indeed explosively combustible and that eyebrows are not necessarily a permanent feature of one's face.
    A Short History of Nearly Everything
    ― Bill Bryson
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  • In the countryside, litter doesn't have a friend. It doesn't have anybody who's saying, 'Wait a minute, this is really starting to get out of control.'
    ― Bill Bryson
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  • It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you.
    A Short History of Nearly Everything
    ― Bill Bryson
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  • It is not true that the English invented cricket as a way of making all other human endeavours look interesting and lively; that was merely an unintended side effect. I don't wish to denigrate a sport that is enjoyed by millions, some of them awake and facing the right way, but it is an odd game.
    In a Sunburned Country (US) / Down Under (UK) (2000)
    ― Bill Bryson
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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.
    In a Sunburned Country (US) / Down Under (UK) (2000)
    ― Bill Bryson
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  • It would be a great abuse of my position to write that it was Northwest Airlines that treated us in this shoddy and inexcusable way, so I won't.
    Im a Stranger Here Myself (US) / Notes From a Big Country (UK) (1998)
    ― Bill Bryson
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  • Just down the road stood a little town, which I shall call Dullard lest the people recognize themselves and take me to court or come to my house and batter me with baseball bats.
    The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America
    ― Bill Bryson
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  • Maine is wonderful. It can be very hard. I mean, if you look at the profile maps it doesn't look it, but somehow when you get out there it's really steep and hard.
    ― Bill Bryson
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  • More than 300 million people in the world speak English and the rest, it sometimes seems, try to.
    ― Bill Bryson
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  • Much of the tablecloth was a series of grey smudges outlined in a large, irregular patch of yellow that looked distressingly like a urine stain.
    Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe
    ― Bill Bryson
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  • My father liked Iowa. He lived his whole life in the state, and is even now working his way through eternity there, in Glendale Cemetery in Des Moines.
    The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America
    ― Bill Bryson
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  • My first rule of consumerism is never to buy anything you can't make your children carry.
    ― Bill Bryson
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  • My wife recently put me on a diet after suggesting (a little unkindly, if you ask me), that I was beginning to look like something Richard Branson would try to get airborne.
    Im a Stranger Here Myself (US) / Notes From a Big Country (UK) (1998)
    ― Bill Bryson
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  • Nearly a quarter of American men were in the Armed forces. The rest were in school, in prison, or were George W. Bush.
    The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
    ― Bill Bryson
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