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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
Simple
Latin
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Precious
Littles
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English
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Grammar
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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.
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Tune your television to any channel it doesn't receive and about 1 percent of the dancing static you see is accounted for by this ancient remnant of the Big Bang. The next time you complain that there is nothing on, remember that you can always watch the birth of the universe.
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Physicists are atoms' way of thinking about atoms.
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I can't think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything.
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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.'
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Romans park their cars the way I would park if I had just spilled a beaker of hydrochloric acid on my lap.
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Geologists are never at a loss for paperweights.
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My mother only ever said two things. She said,'I don't know, dear.'And she said,'Can I get you a sandwich, honey?
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You don't have to know anything about baseball to respond to Babe Ruth because he's just this magnificent human being. And a really good story because he was this kid who grew up essentially as an orphan, you know, had a tough life, and then he became the most successful baseball player ever. But he was also a really good guy.
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Have you ever seen Glenn Beck in operation? It is the most terrifying thing. It's so bad that you think he's going to announce in a minute that it's all a great con. He makes Sarah Palin look reasonable and steady.
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I come from Des Moines. Someone had to.
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England was full of words I'd never heard before - streaky bacon, short back and sides, Belisha beacon, serviettes, high tea, ice-cream cornet.
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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.
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Protons give an atom its identity, electrons its personality.
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I come Des Moines. Somebody had to.
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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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You may find that your parents are the most delightful people, but you don't want to live with them.
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Houses aren't refuges from history. They are where history ends up.
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No one knows, incidentally, why Australia's spiders are so extravagantly toxic capturing small insects and injecting them with enough poison to drop a horse would appear to be the most literal case of overkill. Still, it does mean that everyone gives them lots of space.
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A cough so robust that I tapped into two new seams of phlegm.
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