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I can't imagine there has ever been a more gratifying time or place to be alive than America in the 1950s. No country had ever known such prosperity.

Bill Bryson

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Bill Bryson
Age: 73
Born: 1951
Born: December 8
Author
Autobiographer
Journalist
Science Communicator
Science Writer
Travel Writer
Writer
Des Moines
Iowa
William Bryson
William Bill McGuire Bryson
William McGuire Bryson
Alive
Known
Place
America
Ever
Country
Gratifying
Time
Prosperity
Imagine

More quotes by Bill Bryson

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After years of patient study (and with cricket there can be no other kind), I have decided that there is nothing wrong with the game that the introduction of golf carts wouldn't fix in a hurry.
Bill Bryson
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For anyone of a rational disposition, fashion is often nearly impossible to fathom. Throughout many periods of history – perhaps most – it can seem as if the whole impulse of fashion has been to look maximally ridiculous. If one could be maximally uncomfortable as well, the triumph was all the greater.
Bill Bryson
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The great failure in education, much of the time, is the lack of excitement and stimulus
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It was an odd situation. For a century and a half, men got rid of their own hair, which was perfectly comfortable, and instead covered their heads with something foreign and uncomfortable. Very often it was actually their own hair made into a wig. People who couldn't afford wigs tried to make their hair look like a wig.
Bill Bryson
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Consider the Lichen. Lichens are just about the hardiest visible organisms on Earth, but the least ambitious.
Bill Bryson
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I wish I could adjust my voice, but it's just what's happened to me. It's because I've lived abroad for a long time, and my wife is English and my kids all have English accents, and every voice I hear is English. I've never intentionally changed my accent at all.
Bill Bryson
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... it occurred to me that never again would he be seven years, one month and six days old, so we had better catch these moments while we can.
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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What is it about maps? I could look at them all day, earnestly studying the names of towns and villages I have never heard of and will never visit.
Bill Bryson
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It is always quietly thrilling to find yourself looking at a world you know well but have never seen from such an angle before.
Bill Bryson
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Protons give an atom its identity, electrons its personality.
Bill Bryson
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Germans are flummoxed by humor, the Swiss have no concept of fun, the Spanish think there is nothing at all ridiculous about eating dinner at midnight, and the Italians should never, ever have been let in on the invention of the motor car.
Bill Bryson
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Beulah has a husband?' I know. It's a miracle. There can't be more than two people on the planet who'd be willing to sleep with her, and here we are both in the same town.
Bill Bryson
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I'm not funny in person. I mean I'm really not. I'm one of those people who always screw up anecdotes.
Bill Bryson
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Before, prior to. There is no difference between these two except length and a certain affectedness on the part of 'prior to.' To paraphrase Bernstein, if you would use 'posterior to' instead of 'after,' then by all means use 'prior to' instead of 'before.
Bill Bryson
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He had the sort of face that makes you realize God does have a sense of humor.
Bill Bryson
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In my day, the principal concerns of university students were sex, smoking dope, rioting and learning. Learning was something you did only when the first three weren't available.
Bill Bryson
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Out of the thirty thousand types of edible plants thought to exist on Earth, just eleven—corn, rice, wheat, potatoes, cassava, sorghum, millet, beans, barley, rye, and oats—account for 93 percent of all that humans eat, and every one of them was first cultivated by our Neolithic ancestors.
Bill Bryson
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To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.
Bill Bryson
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Taking a scenic route in Southeast Iowa is like talking about a good Barry Manilow album. You have to make certain allowances.
Bill Bryson