Bill Bryson
Bill Bryson
William McGuire "Bill" Bryson, OBE, FRSis a best-selling Anglo-American author of books on travel, the English language, science, and other non-fiction topics. Born in the United States, he has been a resident of Britain for most of his adult life, returning to America between 1995 and 2003. He served as the chancellor of Durham University from 2005 to 2011...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth8 December 1951
CityDes Moines, IA
CountryUnited States of America
I can wear a baseball cap; I am entitled to wear a baseball cap. I am genetically pre-disposed to wear a baseball cap, whereas most English people look wrong in a baseball cap.
A sign in the yard of a church next door said CHRIST IS THE ANSWER. (The question, of course, is: What do you say when you strike your thumb with a hammer?)
There is no reason why we shouldn't be able to split an infinitive, any more than we should forsake instant coffee and air travel because they weren't available to the Romans.
Coming back to your native land after an absence of many years is a surprisingly unsettling business, a little like waking from a long coma. Time, you discover, has wrought changes that leave you feeling mildly foolish and out of touch.
Britain still has the most reliably beautiful countryside of anywhere in the world. I would hate to be part of the generation that allowed that to be lost.
In a funny way, nothing makes you feel more like a native of your own country than to live where nearly everyone is not.
It is unthinkable to have a British countryside that doesn't have actual functioning farmers riding tractors, cows in fields, things like that.
The first book I did - the first successful book - was a kind of a travel book, and publishers in Britain encouraged me to do more.
The whole of the global economy is based on supplying the cravings of two per cent of the world's population.
There is the odd exception, like Albert Einstein, but as a breed, scientists tend not be very good at presenting themselves.
You may find that your parents are the most delightful people, but you don't want to live with them.
All the things that are part of your heritage make you British - that makes this country what it is. It's part of your history. And here, unlike America, it's still living history.
An awful lot of England is slowly eroding, in ways that I find really distressing, and an awful lot of it is the hedgerows... We're reaching the point where a lot of the English countryside looks just like Iowa - just kind of open space.
I hadn't realized quite how extraordinary Charles Lindbergh's achievement was in flying the Atlantic alone. He had never flown over open water before, but he flew straight to Dingle Bay in Ireland and then on to Paris, exactly as planned.