Bill Bryson quote: "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."

I had always thought that once you grew up you could do anything you wanted - stay up all night or e...
BILL BRYSON

People in the West like to shoot things. When they first got to the West they shot buffalo. Once the...
BILL BRYSON

Energy is liberated matter, matter is energy waiting to happen.
BILL BRYSON

You may not feel outstandingly robust, but if you are an average-sized adult you will contain within...
BILL BRYSON

The real significance of Magellan's voyage was not that it was the first to circumnavigate the plane...
BILL BRYSON

What on earth would I do if four bears came into my camp? Why, I would die of course. Literally shit...
BILL BRYSON

America's industrial success produced a roll call of financial magnificence: Rockefellers, Morgans, ...
BILL BRYSON

Clearly, some time ago makers and consumers of American junk food passed jointly through some kind o...
BILL BRYSON

There are things you just can't do in life. You can't beat the phone company, you can't make a waite...
BILL BRYSON

There is the odd exception, like Albert Einstein, but as a breed, scientists tend not be very good a...
BILL BRYSON

I still enjoy traveling a lot. I mean, it amazes me that I still get excited in hotel rooms just to ...
BILL BRYSON

To me, the greatest invention of my lifetime is the laptop computer and the fact that I can be worki...
BILL BRYSON

There are only three things that can kill a farmer: lightning, rolling over in a tractor, and old ag...
BILL BRYSON

If you drive to, say, Shenandoah National Park, or the Great Smoky Mountains, you'll get some ap...
BILL BRYSON

Much as I resented having to grow up in Des Moines, it gave me a real appreciation for every place i...
BILL BRYSON

I'm not a natural story-teller. Put a keyboard in front of me and I'm fine, but stand me up ...
BILL BRYSON

What an odd thing tourism is. You fly off to a strange land, eagerly abandoning all the comforts of ...
BILL BRYSON

Among the many thousands of things that I have never been able to understand, one in particular stan...
BILL BRYSON

Up to a third of bundling couples found themselves presented with a permanent souvenir of the occasi...
BILL BRYSON

The whole of the global economy is based on supplying the cravings of two per cent of the world's po...
BILL BRYSON

He had the sort of face that makes you realize God does have a sense of humor.
BILL BRYSON

More than 300 million people in the world speak English and the rest, it sometimes seems, try to.
BILL BRYSON

For a long time it puzzled me how something so expensive, so leading edge, could be so useless, and ...
BILL BRYSON

Incidentally, disturbance from cosmic background radiation is something we have all experienced. Tun...
BILL BRYSON

I had always thought that once you grew up you could do anything you wanted -- stay up all night or ...
BILL BRYSON

The biggest attraction in Britain is Britain - the whole package. Our heritage is not just a collect...
BILL BRYSON

I can wear a baseball cap; I am entitled to wear a baseball cap. I am genetically pre-disposed to we...
BILL BRYSON

The whole of the global economy is based on supplying the cravings of two per cent of the world'...
BILL BRYSON

Boston's freeway system is insane. It was clearly designed by a person who had spent his childho...
BILL BRYSON

For a long time, I'd been vaguely fascinated by the idea that Charles Lindbergh flew the Atlanti...
BILL BRYSON

I've been writing all these books that have been largely autobiographical and yet, really, they ...
BILL BRYSON

Roads get wider and busier and less friendly to pedestrians. And all of the development based around...
BILL BRYSON

If you go out on the Appalachian Trail, you have to bring so much more equipment - a tent, sleeping ...
BILL BRYSON

You don't have to know anything about baseball to respond to Babe Ruth because he's just thi...
BILL BRYSON

We forget just how painfully dim the world was before electricity. A candle, a good candle, provides...
BILL BRYSON

England was full of words I'd never heard before - streaky bacon, short back and sides, Belisha ...
BILL BRYSON

I grew up, really, in the days before air conditioning. So I can remember what it was like to be rea...
BILL BRYSON

Have you ever seen Glenn Beck in operation? It is the most terrifying thing. It's so bad that yo...
BILL BRYSON

I'm not funny in person. I mean I'm really not. I'm one of those people who always screw...
BILL BRYSON

Yes, U.S. travelers dress better. The British are always so conspicuous in hot climates. They don...
BILL BRYSON

There'd never been a more advantageous time to be a criminal in America than during the 13 years...
BILL BRYSON

Distance changes utterly when you take the world on foot. A mile becomes a long way, two miles liter...
BILL BRYSON

The world at night, for much of history, was a very dark place indeed.
BILL BRYSON

Open your refrigerator door, and you summon forth more light than the total amount enjoyed by most h...
BILL BRYSON

An awful lot of England is slowly eroding, in ways that I find really distressing, and an awful lot ...
BILL BRYSON

The world is very lucky to have America. It's got to be the first time in the whole history of t...
BILL BRYSON

The rooms were small and airless and cramped. To make matters worse, somebody in our group was makin...
BILL BRYSON

Nothing, however, bemused the Indians more than the European habit of blowing their noses into a fin...
BILL BRYSON

Where I grew up, in Des Moines, Iowa, there is hardly any downtown economic activity now. Everybody ...
BILL BRYSON

Des Moines is like your typical American city; it's just these concentric circles of malls, buil...
BILL BRYSON

I grew up in Des Moines. My dad had a house full of books, things like P.G. Wodehouse books and '...
BILL BRYSON

I come from Des Moines. Someone had to.
BILL BRYSON

If this book has a lesson, it is that we are awfully lucky to be here-and by 'we' I mean every livin...
BILL BRYSON

I'm a great believer that you had to do everything you've done to have got to where you are.
BILL BRYSON

The whole of the global economy is based on supplying the cravings of teo per cent of the world's po...
BILL BRYSON

In a funny way, nothing makes you feel more like a native of your own country than to live where nea...
BILL BRYSON

I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.
BILL BRYSON

The remarkable position in which we find ourselves is that we don't actually know what we actually k...
BILL BRYSON

In any area of human endeavour, there is going to be mediocrity. You're going to find people who...
BILL BRYSON

I could give you a long list of things I like about Britain, but essentially what it comes down to i...
BILL BRYSON

I have long known that it is part of God's plan for me to spend a little time with each of the m...
BILL BRYSON

In the countryside, litter doesn't have a friend. It doesn't have anybody who's saying, ...
BILL BRYSON

I see litter as part of a long continuum of anti-social behaviour.
BILL BRYSON

Cavendish is a book in himself. Born into a life of sumptuous privilege- his grandfathers were dukes...
BILL BRYSON

The romance of travel wasn't always terribly evident to those who were actually experiencing it.
BILL BRYSON

Maine is wonderful. It can be very hard. I mean, if you look at the profile maps it doesn't look...
BILL BRYSON

America is a great disappointment to me. As I said in one of my books, other societies create civili...
BILL BRYSON

Tune your television to any channel it doesn't receive and about 1 percent of the dancing static you...
BILL BRYSON

I tell the kids that, even in a childhood marked by despair and deprivation, I knew that no matter w...
BILL BRYSON

I would make a genuinely terrible guide. I can't remember things. I would get half way through t...
BILL BRYSON

Physics is really nothing more than a search for ultimate simplicity, but so far all we have is a ki...
BILL BRYSON

Three hundred types of mussel, a third of the world’s total, live in the Smokies. Smokies mussels ...
BILL BRYSON

I have made a career of bumbling around places, stumbling on landmarks and generally being quite hap...
BILL BRYSON

Language, never forget, is more fashion than science, and matters of usage, spelling and pronunciati...
BILL BRYSON

In my day the principal concerns of university students were sex, smoking dope, rioting and learning...
BILL BRYSON

No one knows, incidentally, why Australia's spiders are so extravagantly toxic; capturing small inse...
BILL BRYSON

In 1927, if you were stuck with idle time, reading is what you did. It's no accident that the &#...
BILL BRYSON

I have long known that it is part of God's plan for me to spend a little time with each of the most ...
BILL BRYSON

I am taking this very seriously and I am honored to be appointed. It's not every day that an immigra...
BILL BRYSON

Nothing gives the English more pleasure, in a quiet but determined sort of way, than to do things od...
BILL BRYSON

Most scientists are without exception adorably quirky, and one of the ways of making it more accessi...
BILL BRYSON

When you tell an Iowan a joke, you can see a kind of race going on between his brain and his express...
BILL BRYSON

I don't plan to write another science book, but I don't plan not to. I do enjoy writing histories, a...
BILL BRYSON

the party animal of the atomic world?
BILL BRYSON

A bank robber in Los Angeles told the clerk not to give him cash, but to deposit the money in his ch...
BILL BRYSON

And I find chopsticks frankly distressing. Am I alone in thinking it odd that a people ingenious eno...
BILL BRYSON

In three minutes, 98 percent of all the matter there is or will ever be has been produced. We have a...
BILL BRYSON

My first rule of travel is never to go to a place that sounds like a medical condition and Critz is ...
BILL BRYSON

Germans are flummoxed by humor, the Swiss have no concept of fun, the Spanish think there is nothing...
BILL BRYSON

English grammar is so complex and confusing for the one very simple reason that its rules and termin...
BILL BRYSON

Coming back to your native land after an absence of many years is a surprisingly unsettling business...
BILL BRYSON

One of the brilliant things about Britain is the way you've managed to save old things but to ke...
BILL BRYSON

She was torn between her customer service training and her youthful certitude.
BILL BRYSON

It is easy to overlook this thought that life just is. As humans we are inclined to feel that life m...
BILL BRYSON

As we parted at the Natural History Museum in London, I asked Richard Fortey how science ensures tha...
BILL BRYSON

When you grow up in middle America you are inculcated from the earliest age with the belief - no, th...
BILL BRYSON

We are so used to the notion of our own inevitability as life's dominant species that it is hard to ...
BILL BRYSON

To my mind, the only possible pet is a cow. Cows love you. . . . They will listen to your problems a...
BILL BRYSON

My first rule of consumerism is never to buy anything you can't make your children carry.
BILL BRYSON

Personally, I've never been attracted to danger. It's not my sort of thing. I am more attrac...
BILL BRYSON

In France, a chemist named Pilatre de Rozier tested the flammability of hydrogen by gulping a mouthf...
BILL BRYSON

If you imagine the 4,500-bilion-odd years of Earth's history compressed into a normal earthly day, t...
BILL BRYSON

It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at...
BILL BRYSON

There are three stages in scientific discovery. First, people deny that it is true, then they deny t...
BILL BRYSON

Because they are so long-lived, atoms really get around. Every atom you possess has almost certainly...
BILL BRYSON

Protons give an atom its identity, electrons its personality.
BILL BRYSON

Britain still has the most reliably beautiful countryside of anywhere in the world. I would hate to ...
BILL BRYSON

As my father always used to tell me, 'You see, son, there's always someone in the world worse off th...
BILL BRYSON

The average Southerner has the speech patterns of someone slipping in and out of consciousness. I ca...
BILL BRYSON

I once joked in a book that there are three things you can't do in life. You can't beat the ...
BILL BRYSON

Scientists tend to be unappreciated in the world at large, but you can hardly overstate the importan...
BILL BRYSON

I just use my life story as a kind of device on which to hang comic observations. It's not my in...
BILL BRYSON

I want things to be better all the time. And I tend to get angry about that. Books are an opportunit...
BILL BRYSON

I once joked in a book that there are three things you can't do in life. You can't beat the ...
BILL BRYSON

But that's the glory of foreign travel, as far as I am concerned. I don't want to know what people a...
BILL BRYSON

Nobody gets excited about the future at all, ever. The future is something we find depressing and wo...
BILL BRYSON

A third...candidate for Shakespearean authorship was Christopher Marlowe. He was the right age (just...
BILL BRYSON

A Walk in the Woods
BILL BRYSON

You can always tell a Midwestern couple in Europe because they will be standing in the middle of a b...
BILL BRYSON

I would rather have bowel surgery in the woods with a stick. If you are not stung or pronged to deat...
BILL BRYSON

[Australia] is the home of the largest living thing on earth, the Great Barrier Reef, and of the lar...
BILL BRYSON

The people are immensely likable— cheerful, extrovert, quick-witted, and unfailingly obliging. The...
BILL BRYSON

So, if people didn’t settle down to take up farming, why then did they embark on this entirely new...
BILL BRYSON

Taxonomy is described sometimes as a science and sometimes as an art, but really it’s a battlegrou...
BILL BRYSON

Unluckier still was Guillaume Le Gentil, whose experiences are wonderfully summarized by Timothy Fer...
BILL BRYSON

I always tell people there's only one trick to writing: You have to write something that people ...
BILL BRYSON

My first rule of consumerism is never to buy anything you can't make your children carry.
BILL BRYSON

I know this goes without saying, but Stonehenge really was the most incredible accomplishment. It to...
BILL BRYSON

Of all the things I am not very good at, living in the real world is perhaps the most outstanding.
BILL BRYSON

We used to build civilizations. Now we build shopping malls.
BILL BRYSON

I mused for a few moments on the question of which was worse, to lead a life so boring that you are ...
BILL BRYSON

In this he was like most Midwesterners. Directions are very important to them. They have an innate n...
BILL BRYSON

I used to give X-ray vision a lot of thought because I couldn’t see how it could work. I mean, if ...
BILL BRYSON

It is often said that what sets Shakespeare apart is his ability to illuminate the workings of the s...
BILL BRYSON

Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, ...
BILL BRYSON

As we sit here, continents are adrift, like leaves on a pond. GPS tracking shows North America &...
BILL BRYSON

Whatever happens in the world - whatever is discovered or created or bitterly fought over - eventual...
BILL BRYSON

A significant fraction of thru-hikers reach Katahdin, then turn around and start back to Georgia. Th...
BILL BRYSON

Hunters will tell you that a moose is a wily and ferocious forest creature. Nonsense. A moose is a c...
BILL BRYSON

As a student, frustrated by the limitations of conventional mathematics, he invented an entirely new...
BILL BRYSON

You can get some sense of the immaterial quality of clouds by strolling through fog—which is, afte...
BILL BRYSON

What sets the carbon atom apart is that it is shamelessly promiscuous.
BILL BRYSON

It seems impossible that you could get something from nothing, but the fact that once there was noth...
BILL BRYSON

When you sit in a chair, you are not actually sitting there, but levitating above it at a height of ...
BILL BRYSON

The upshot of all this is that we live in a universe whose age we can't quite compute, surrounded by...
BILL BRYSON

Bulgaria, I reflected as I walked back to the hotel, isn’t a country; it’s a near-death experien...
BILL BRYSON

One consequential change is that people used to get most of their calories at breakfast and midday, ...
BILL BRYSON

Because bread was so important, the laws governing its purity were strict and the punishment severe....
BILL BRYSON

Columbus's real achievement was managing to cross the ocean successfully in both directions. Though ...
BILL BRYSON

It was a lot more fun to get famous than to be famous.
BILL BRYSON

I grew up with my little brother, and we were raised by my grandmother. I was an insider for real. I...
BRYSON TILLER

I can't wait to see someone else from Louisville make a hit song 'cos that'd be dope. I ...
BRYSON TILLER

I used to bottle up all of my emotions and never say anything. Even if something really made me mad,...
BRYSON TILLER

Philosophers are capable of almost endless enjoyment of mutual misunderstanding.
LYMAN BRYSON

I like anime, but one of my favorite animes, and one of the most popular animes out there - Dragon B...
BRYSON TILLER

You would think, because I stayed to myself and I was shy, that I'd be a good student, but actua...
BRYSON TILLER

Music should probably provide answers in terms of lyrical content, and giving people a sense of toge...
PEABO BRYSON

I read an article in 'Forbes' entitled 'Six Ways To Achieve Any Goal,' and it really...
BRYSON TILLER

It wasn't until 9th grade that I got into music. This guy in school heard me singing around the ...
BRYSON TILLER

I'm only as good as my team.
BRYSON SUMLIN

If it wasn't for all the people around you and in your life, you couldn't do anything, ... You can't...
BRYSON SUMLIN

I'd rather my teammates do the talking, ... I was taught to let my actions do the talking.
BRYSON SUMLIN

We were well-prepared for this game, all across the board, ... I don't think we've reached our poten...
BRYSON SUMLIN

We just have to work even harder, that's all, ... Never settle.
BRYSON SUMLIN

I was taught at an early age to be humble, ... All my family taught me that. You can't forget where ...
BRYSON SUMLIN

I have to see where the defense and my linemen are, ... I have to set them up in the right place to ...
BRYSON SUMLIN

There's a lot of little things I need to work on, ... I have to do a better job showing run fake. Bu...
BRYSON SUMLIN

Point A to Point Z.
BRYSON SUMLIN

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a guy coming, ... I cut left to bring the guy to my block.
BRYSON SUMLIN

The second home run I thought it was a pop-up. I guess the wind gave me a little help.
BRYSON BENDALL

It was a good pitch at the knee caps and I got in front and attacked it. I didn't know what a home r...
BRYSON BENDALL

We knew we could hit him. We just had to get out in front and sit on that first pitch fastball.
BRYSON BENDALL

The second home run ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢Â‚Â¬Ã¢Â€Â I thought it was a pop-up. I guess the wind g...
BRYSON BENDALL

It was a good pitch at the knee caps and I got in front and attacked it. I didn't know what a home r...
BRYSON BENDALL

The intimate, even incestuous Circle in the Square where the audience was close enough to be patrons...
JOHN BRYSON

I was working at Papa John's full-time. I had just quit my part-time job at UPS. I was there for...
BRYSON TILLER

I read an article in Forbes entitled 'Six Ways To Achieve Any Goal,' and it really inspired ...
BRYSON TILLER

Sometimes my life is moving so fast that I forget what's going on. I'm just going with the p...
BRYSON TILLER

The insurance payments are going to go away. The outlook remains very bleak.
JAY BRYSON

I just started mimicking what I heard and singing along to it.
BRYSON TILLER

Everybody always thinks you have to move out of the city and go where the music industry is, but it&...
BRYSON TILLER

Whenever you fly into Louisville, you see a sign that says, 'It's Possible Here.' I reme...
BRYSON TILLER

I'm from Louisville, Kentucky, and nobody gets out of there. So I'm like, how am I gonna get...
BRYSON TILLER

I always laugh when I listen to my old stuff. I was just trying way too much back then. Doing too ma...
BRYSON TILLER

Those lanes will be constructed during the 2006 construction season. Traffic will remain on the exis...
CRAIG BRYSON

I grew up with my little brother, and we were raised by my grandmother. I was an insider for real. I...
BRYSON TILLER

It will help more evenly distribute the east-west traffic in that area.
CRAIG BRYSON

The lower cost of Chinese goods means we can spend more on other goods and services.
JAY BRYSON

The good thing about our schedule, you don't want to say the 'classics' don't matter, but we can sti...
BRYSON ROSSER

This has been a long time coming for us. We first conceived of the project about 10 years ago, and t...
CRAIG BRYSON

Music is an important factor to a healthy way of living.
MAURICE BRYSON

Surround yourself with people who value your friendship, rather than those who posed the opposite.
MAURICE BRYSON

Don't be pigheaded over your successes, but rather educate and inspire others to follow in your foot...
MAURICE BRYSON

Love is magical, adorable, and challenging. To get the best out of it, you have to live it, feel it,...
MAURICE BRYSON

In general, a rising rate environment slows down growth, so most companies are not going to go as go...
JAY BRYSON

Don’t pinch that guy’s ass. He’s a leprechaun.
KATHY BRYSON

It was never just about the money.
KATHY BRYSON

She caught you. Therefore she gets your treasure.
KATHY BRYSON

Are you trying to seduce me or trick me?
KATHY BRYSON

No one ever said you can’t have world dominance and a little romance too.
KATHY 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.

Copied!

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

Share:

Related

More Bill Bryson