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7fb8a60
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Our instinct may be to see the impossibility of tracking everything down as frustrating, dispiriting, perhaps even appalling, but it can just as well be viewed as almost unbearably exciting. We live on a planet that has a more or less infinite capacity to surprise. What reasoning person could possibly want it any other way?
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Bill Bryson |
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e7ddbfe
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I wanted to quit and to do this forever, sleep in a bed and in a tent, see what was over the next hill and never see a hill again. All of this all at once, every moment, on the trail or off.
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Bill Bryson |
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b4d1b71
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The people are immensely likable-- cheerful, extrovert, quick-witted, and unfailingly obliging. Their cities are safe and clean and nearly always built on water. They have a society that is prosperous, well ordered, and instinctively egalitarian. The food is excellent. The beer is cold. The sun nearly always shines. There is coffee on every corner. Life doesn't get much better than this.
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Bill Bryson |
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5db037d
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99.99 percent of all species that have ever lived are no longer with us.
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Bill Bryson |
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927a4ec
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When cells are no longer needed, they die with what can only be called great dignity. They take down all the struts and buttresses that hold them together and quietly devour their component parts. The process is known as apoptosis or programmed cell death. Every day billions of your cells die for your benefit and billions of others clean up the mess. Cells can also die violently- for instance, when infected- but mostly they die because they..
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Bill Bryson |
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14d968e
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And I find chopsticks frankly distressing. Am I alone in thinking it odd that a people ingenious enough to invent paper, gunpowder, kites and any number of other useful objects, and who have a noble history extending back 3,000 years haven't yet worked out that a pair of knitting needles is no way to capture food?
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humor
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Bill Bryson |
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d96bf9f
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Atoms, in short, are very abundant. They are also fantastically durable. Because they are so long lived, atoms really get around. Every atom you possess has almost certainly passed through several stars and been part of millions of organisms on its way to becoming you. We are each so atomically numerous and so vigorously recycled at death that a significant number of our atoms-- up to a billion for each of us, it has been suggested-- probab..
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Bill Bryson |
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c9a7b99
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We are so used to the notion of our own inevitability as life's dominant species that it is hard to grasp that we are here only because of timely extraterrestrial bangs and other random flukes. The one thing we have in common with all other living things is that for nearly four billions years our ancestors have managed to slip through a series of closing doors every time we needed them to.
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Bill Bryson |
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20888f9
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Your pillow alone may be home to 40 million bed mites. (To them your head is just one large oily bon-bon). And don't think a clean pillow-case will make a difference... Indeed, if your pillow is six years old--which is apparently about the average age for a pillow--it has been estimated that one-tenth of its weight will be made up of sloughed skin, living mites, dead mites and mite dung.
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Bill Bryson |
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250a124
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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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middle-age
parents
nostalgia
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Bill Bryson |
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3a55ff6
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Australia] is the home of the largest living thing on earth, the Great Barrier Reef, and of the largest monolith, Ayers Rock (or Uluru to use its now-official, more respectful Aboriginal name). It has more things that will kill you than anywhere else. Of the world's ten most poisonous snakes, all are Australian. Five of its creatures - the funnel web spider, box jellyfish, blue-ringed octopus, paralysis tick, and stonefish - are the most le..
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Bill Bryson |
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574b963
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People don't talk like this, theytalklikethis. Syllables, words, sentences run together like a watercolor left in the rain. To understand what anyone is saying to us we must separate these noises into words and the words into sentences so that we might in our turn issue a stream of mixed sounds in response. If what we say is suitably apt and amusing, the listener will show his delight by emitting a series of uncontrolled high-pitched noises..
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talking
laugh
speech
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Bill Bryson |
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92b0d54
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I mention all this to make the point that if you were designing an organism to look after life in our lonely cosmos, to monitor where it is going and keep a record of where it has been, you wouldn't choose human beings for the job. But here's an extremely salient point: we have been chosen, by fate or Providence or whatever you wish to call it. It's an unnerving thought that we may be living the universe's supreme achievement and its worst ..
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Bill Bryson |
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d440d22
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I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.
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truth
first-words
iowa
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Bill Bryson |
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55a0b29
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In America, alas, beauty has become something you drive to, and nature an either/or proposition--either you ruthlessly subjugate it, as at Tocks Dam and a million other places, or you deify it, treat it as something holy and remote, a thing apart, as along the Appalachian Trail. Seldom would it occur to anyone on either side that people and nature could coexist to their mutual benefit--that, say, a more graceful bridge across the Delaware R..
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nature
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Bill Bryson |
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b3e75bb
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I'm quite certain that if the rest of the world vanished overnight and the development of cricket were left in Australian hands, within a generation, the players would be wearing shorts and using the bats to hit each other, and the thing is, it'd be a much better game for it.
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Bill Bryson |
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37c6a53
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The tearoom lady called me love. All the shop ladies called me love and most of the men called me mate. I hadn't been here twelve hours and already they loved me.
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Bill Bryson |
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c714cfa
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At the foot of the mountain, the park ended and suddenly all was squalor again. I was once more struck by this strange compartmentalization that goes on in America -- a belief that no commercial activities must be allowed inside the park, but permitting unrestrained development outside, even though the landscape there may be just as outstanding. America has never quite grasped that you can live in a place without making it ugly, that beauty..
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Bill Bryson |
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4564a1a
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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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Bill Bryson |
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6827541
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I glanced at my watch - it was two minutes to eleven; just right for lunch when and if we ever got to the godforsaken lodge - and took some comfort from the thought that at least I still had my wits about me. Or at least I felt as if I did. Presumably, a confused person would be too addled to recognize that he was confused. Ergo, if you know that you are not confused then you are not confused. Unless, it suddenly occurred to me - and here w..
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Bill Bryson |
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0d20287
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I sat on a toilet watching the water run thinking what an odd thing tourism is. You fly off to a strange land, eagerly abandoning all the comforts of home and then expend vast quantities of time and money in a largely futile effort to recapture the comforts you wouldn't have lost if you hadn't left home in the first place.
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home
tourism
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Bill Bryson |
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2d80a29
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What a joy walking is. All the cares of life, all the hopeless, inept fuckwits that God has strewn along the Bill Bryson Highway of Life suddenly seem far away and harmless, and the world becomes tranquil and welcoming and good.
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Bill Bryson |
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7e9054c
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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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taxonomy
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Bill Bryson |
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2294c49
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Traveling is more fun-- hell, life is more fun--if you can treat it as a series of impulses.
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Bill Bryson |
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0e6600d
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There is no point in hurrying because you are not actually going anywhere. However far or long you plod, you are always in the same place: in the woods.
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Bill Bryson |
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e23e769
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At a conference of sociologists in America in 1977, love was defined as "the cognitive-affective state characterized by intrusive and obsessive fantasizing concerning reciprocity of amorant feelings by the object of the amorance." That is jargon - the practice of never calling a spade a spade when you might instead call it a manual earth-restructuring implement - and it is one of the great curses of modern English."
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Bill Bryson |
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92f9026
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Christmas tree stands are the work of the devil and they want you dead.
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Bill Bryson |
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ddb357e
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For anyone of a rational disposition, fashion is often nearly impossible to fathom. Throughout many periods of history - perhaps most - it can seem as if the whole impulse of fashion has been to look maximally ridiculous. If one could be maximally uncomfortable as well, the triumph was all the greater.
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history
humor
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Bill Bryson |
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a5e5b04
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It was one of those sumptuous days when the world is full of autumn muskiness and tangy, crisp perfection: vivid blue sky, deep green fields, leaves in a thousand luminous hues. It is a truly astounding sight when every tree in a landscape becomes individual, when each winding back highway and plump hillside is suddenly and infinitely splashed with every sharp shade that nature can bestow - flaming scarlet, lustrous gold, throbbing vermilio..
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colours
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Bill Bryson |
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33fc42d
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I refer of course to the soaring wonder of the age known as the Eiffel Tower. Never in history has a structure been more technologically advanced, materially obsolescent, and gloriously pointless all at the same time.
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Bill Bryson |
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da991b8
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Every twenty minutes on the Appalachian Trail, Katz and I walked farther than the average American walks in a week. For 93 percent of all trips outside the home, for whatever distance or whatever purpose, Americans now get in a car. On average, the total walking of an American these days - that's walking of all types: from car to office, from office to car, around the supermarket and shopping malls - adds up to 1.4 miles a week...That's rid..
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appalachian-trail
transporation
hiking
cars
walking
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Bill Bryson |
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34710d8
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But don't worry," she continued. "Most snakes don't want to hurt you. If you're out in the bush and a snake comes along, just stop dead and let it slide over your shoes." This, I decided, was the least-likely-to-be-followed advice I have ever been given."
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nature
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Bill Bryson |
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e2ee2f8
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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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spiders
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Bill Bryson |
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957d726
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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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travel
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Bill Bryson |
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9dbe92f
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Coming back to your native land after an absence of many years is a surprisingly unsettling business, a little like waking up from a long coma.
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Bill Bryson |
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aaf6e41
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The universe is not only queerer than we suppose; it is queerer than we can suppose
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Bill Bryson |
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358c413
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Brain cells last as long as you do. You are issued with a hundred billion or so at birth and that is all you are ever going to get. It has been estimated that you lose five hundred of them an hour, so if you have any serious thinking to do there really isn't a moment to waste.
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Bill Bryson |
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cd4e71a
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A third...candidate for Shakespearean authorship was Christopher Marlowe. He was the right age (just two months older than Shakespeare), had the requisite talent, and would certainly have had ample leisure after 1593, assuming he wasn't too dead to work.
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shakespeare
william-shakespeare
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Bill Bryson |
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622afd6
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The number of people on whose cooperative efforts your eventual existence depends has risen to approximately 1,000,000,000,000,000,000, which is several thousand times the total number of people who have ever lived.
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Bill Bryson |
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001417b
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Language, never forget, is more fashion than science, and matters of usage, spelling and pronunciation tend to wander around like hemlines.
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Bill Bryson |
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e164d97
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Most of what has lived on Earth has left behind no record at all.
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Bill Bryson |
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f9e14e1
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Consider the Lichen. Lichens are just about the hardiest visible organisms on Earth, but the least ambitious.
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Bill Bryson |
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3ae7944
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Still, I never really mind bad service in a restaurant. It makes me feel better about not leaving a tip.
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Bill Bryson |
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81ad1a5
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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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Bill Bryson |