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
As the saying goes, it takes all kinds to make the world go around, though perhaps some shouldn't go quite so far around it as others.
Most big companies don't like you very much, except hotels, airlines and Microsoft, which don't like you at all.
Because time moves more slowly in Kid World ... it goes on for decades ... It is adult life that is over in a twinkling.
It is always quietly thrilling to find yourself looking at a world you know well but have never seen from such an angle before.
South Dakota... is like the world's first drive-through sensory deprivation chamber.
We forget just how painfully dim the world was before electricity. A candle, a good candle, provides barely a hundredth of the illumination of a single 100 watt light bulb.
Of all the things I am not very good at, living in the real world is perhaps the most outstanding.
The whole of the global economy is based on supplying the cravings of two per cent of the world's population.
I just use my life story as a kind of device on which to hang comic observations. It's not my interest or instinct to tell the world anything pertinent about myself or my family.
A world without newspapers or a world where the newspapers are purely electronic and you read them on a screen is not a very appealing world.
I can't fix the world. If you want to make a difference in life, you have to direct your energies in a focused way.
The whole of the global economy is based on supplying the cravings of teo per cent of the world's population.
You can always tell a Midwestern couple in Europe because they will be standing in the middle of a busy intersection looking at a wind-blown map and arguing over which way is west. European cities, with their wandering streets and undisciplined alleys, drive Midwesterners practically insane.
For a long time, I'd been vaguely fascinated by the idea that Charles Lindbergh flew the Atlantic and Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs in the same summer.