Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Study
Earnestly
Heard
Villages
Names
Studying
Look
Visit
Looks
Maps
Never
Village
Towns
Travel
More quotes by Bill Bryson
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
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
Making English grammar conform to Latin rules is like asking people to play baseball using the rules of football.
Bill Bryson
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
Croissant: However you choose to pronounce it at home, it is perhaps worth nothing that outside the United States, the closer you can come to saying kwass-ohn, the sooner you can expect to be presented with one.
Bill Bryson
There is no reason why we shouldn't be able to split an infinitive, any more than we should forsake instant coffee and air travel because they weren't available to the Romans.
Bill Bryson
I often feel I'm a disappointment to people because they expect me to be the guy in the books. When I sit next to someone at a dinner party I can see they expect me to be quick and witty, and I'm not at all.
Bill Bryson
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
There is the odd exception, like Albert Einstein, but as a breed, scientists tend not be very good at presenting themselves.
Bill Bryson
The upshot of all this is that we live in a universe whose age we can't quite compute, surrounded by stars whose distances we don't altogether know, filled with matter we can't identify, operating in conformance with physical laws whose properties we don’t truly understand.
Bill Bryson
Black bears rarely attack. But here's the thing. Sometimes they do. All bears are agile, cunning and immensely strong, and they are always hungry. If they want to kill you and eat you, they can, and pretty much whenever they want. That doesn't happen often, but - and here is the absolutely salient point - once would be enough.
Bill Bryson
There'd never been a more advantageous time to be a criminal in America than during the 13 years of Prohibition. At a stroke, the American government closed down the fifth largest industry in the United States - alcohol production - and just handed it to criminals - a pretty remarkable thing to do.
Bill Bryson
To an American the whole purpose of living, the one constant confirmation of continued existence, is to cram as much as sensual pleasure as possible into one's mouth more or less continuously. Gratification, instant and lavish, is a birthright
Bill Bryson
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.
Bill Bryson
Even though sugar was very expensive, people consumed it till their teeth turned black, and if their teeth didn't turn black naturally, they blackened them artificially to show how wealthy and marvelously self-indulgent they were.
Bill Bryson
You may find that your parents are the most delightful people, but you don't want to live with them.
Bill Bryson
I tell the kids that, even in a childhood marked by despair and deprivation, I knew that no matter what happened, I still had my family, or at least the remnants of a family ripped apart by divorce and then glued back together in various odd arrangements through a series of ill- advised remarriages. It was good to know I had a solid foundation.
Bill Bryson
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
I became quietly seized with that nostalgia that overcomes you when you have reached the middle of your life and your father has recently died and it dawns on you that when he went he took some of you with him.
Bill Bryson
Those who sniff decay in every shift of sense or alteration of usage do the language no service. Too often for such people the notion of good English has less to do with expressing ideas clearly than with making words conform to some arbitrary pattern.
Bill Bryson
