Quote

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.

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
Word
Annoying
Unassuming
Language
Gentleman
Signifies
Means
Clearly
Foreigner
Part
English
Apparel
Mean
Critical
Insect
Travel
Foreigners
Unwary
Asking
Insects
Booby
Full
Traps
Mangled

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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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Why is it, I wondered, that old people are always so self-centered and excitable? But I just smiled benignly and stood back, comforted by the thought that soon they would be dead.
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Eating in Sweden is really just a series of heartbreaks.
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For a long time it puzzled me how something so expensive, so leading edge, could be so useless. And then it occurred to me that a computer is a stupid machine with the ability to do incredibly smart things, while computer programmers are smart people with the ability to do incredibly stupid things. They are, in short, a perfect match.
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Perhaps it's my natural pessimism, but it seems that an awfully large part of travel these days is to see things while you still can.
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Physics is really nothing more than a search for ultimate simplicity, but so far all we have is a kind of elegant messiness.
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Most of the time I am sunk in thought, but at some point on each walk there comes a moment when I look up and notice, with a kind of first-time astonishment, the amazing complex delicacy of the words, the casual ease with which elemental things come together to form a composition that is—whatever the season, wherever I put my besotted gaze—perfect.
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The whole of the global economy is based on supplying the cravings of two per cent of the world's population.
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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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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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... 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.
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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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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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He had the sort of face that makes you realize God does have a sense of humor.
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The taipan is the one to watch out for. It is the most poisonous snake on Earth, with a lunge so swift and a venom so potent that your last mortal utterance is likely to be: I say, is that a sn--
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Life just wants to be but it doesn't want to be much.
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I see litter as part of a long continuum of anti-social behaviour.
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Energy is liberated matter, matter is energy waiting to happen.
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I come from Des Moines. Someone had to.
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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.
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