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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.

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
Language
Precious
Littles
Complexes
Reason
Complex
Little
English
Infinitive
Rules
Terminology
Based
Grammar
Common
Confusing
Simple
Latin

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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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Hardly anyone ever leaves. This is because Des Moines is the most powerful hypnotic known to man. Outside town there is a big sign that says, WELCOME TO DES MOINES. THIS IS WHAT DEATH IS LIKE. There isn't really. I just made that up. But the place does get a grip on you.
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There is something about the momentum of travel that makes you want to just keep moving, to never stop.
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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.
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There are things you just can't do in life. You can't beat the phone company, you can't make a waiter see you until he's ready to see you, and you can't go home again.
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I love everything about motels. I can't help myself. I still get excited every time I slip a key into a motel room door and fling it open.
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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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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.
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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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From an evolutionary point of view, sex is really just a reward mechanism to encourage us to pass on our genetic material.
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I don't know whether I'm misanthropic. It seems to me I'm constantly disappointed. I'm very easily disappointed.
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And before long there will be no more milk in bottles delivered to the doorstep or sleepy rural pubs, and the countryside will be mostly shopping centers and theme parks. Forgive me. I don't mean to get upset. But you are taking my world away from me, piece by little piece, and sometimes it just pisses me off. Sorry.
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I come Des Moines. Somebody had to.
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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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In terms of adaptability, humans are pretty amazingly useless.
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I think it's only right that crazy people should have their own city, but I cannot for the life of me see why a sane person would want to go there.
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Geologists are never at a loss for paperweights.
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