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I hadn't realized quite how extraordinary Charles Lindbergh's achievement was in flying the Atlantic alone. He had never flown over open water before, but he flew straight to Dingle Bay in Ireland and then on to Paris, exactly as planned.

Bill Bryson

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Bill Bryson
Age: 72
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
Quite
Hadn
Open
Paris
Lindbergh
Alone
Flying
Flown
Water
Straight
Atlantic
Never
Realized
Charles
Achievement
Flew
Extraordinary
Planned
Exactly
Ireland

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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.
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I love the feeling of being anonymous in a city I've never been before.
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English is full of booby traps for the unwary foreigner. Any language where the unassuming word fly signifies an annoying insect, a means of travel, and a critical part of a gentleman's apparel is clearly asking to be mangled.
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America is a very seductive place in terms of lifestyle and comfort, but it wasn't for me.
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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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Protons give an atom its identity, electrons its personality.
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The real problem you get with humour is that you only have so many kinds of jokes within you, and you mine that vein a lot. This isn't just common to me it's anybody who's funny.
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Taxonomy is described sometimes as a science and sometimes as an art, but really it’s a battleground.
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Physicists are atoms' way of thinking about atoms.
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English grammar is so complex and confusing for the one very simple reason that its rules and terminology are based on Latin, a language with which it has precious little in common.
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Science has been quite embattled. It's the most important thing there is. An arts graduate is not going to fix global warming. They may do other valuable things, but they are not going to fix the planet or cure cancer or get rid of malaria.
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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.
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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.
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Des Moines is like your typical American city it's just these concentric circles of malls, built outward from the city.
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That's the trouble with losing your mind by the time it's gone, it's too late to get it back.
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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.
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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.
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I come Des Moines. Somebody had to.
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I just use my life story as a kind of device on which to hang comic observations. It's not my interest or instinct to tell the world anything pertinent about myself or my family.
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