Quotes from Bill Bryson

Almost no one ever notices it, but our thumbs are on sideways. The thumbnail faces away from the rest of the fingers.

I mentioned my observation that the world seems to be filling up with imbeciles. They explained to me that this is simply an affliction of age.

In Central America, the Maya also independently invented the wheel but couldn't think of any practical applications for it and so reserved it exclusively for children's toys.

What if we are all getting stupid at more or less the same rate and we don't realize it because we are all declining together? You might argue that we'd see a general fall in IQ scores, but what if it's not the kind of deterioration that shows up in IQ tests? What if it were reflected in just, say, poor judgment or diminished taste? We

When we reflect upon the works of William Shakespeare it is of course an amazement to consider that one man could have produced such a sumptuous, wise, varied, thrilling, ever-delighting body of work, but that is of course the hallmark of genius. Only one man had the circumstances and gifts to give us such incomparable works, and William Shakespeare of Stratford was unquestionably that man—whoever he was.

the famous jack-o-lantern mushroom, which glows at night with a greenish phosphorescent ligh called foxfire.

Altogether at least sixty thousand people were sterilized because of Laughlin's efforts. At the peak of the movement in the 1930s, some thirty states had sterilization laws, though only Virginia and California made wide use of them. It is perhaps worth noting that sterilization laws remain on the books in twenty states today.

Too often for such people the notion of good English has less to do with expressing ideas clearly than with making words conform to some arbitrary pattern.

I bought a morning newspaper and found my way into a café. It always amazes me how seldom visitors bother with local papers. Personally I can think of nothing more exciting—certainly nothing you could do in a public place with a cup of coffee—than to read newspapers from a part of the world you know almost nothing about.

Two of the victims died. Mary fled but was recaptured and spent the remaining twenty-three years of her life under house arrest on North Brother Island in the East River until her death in 1938. She was personally responsible for at least fifty-three cases of typhoid and three confirmed deaths, but possibly many more. The particular tragedy of it is that she could have spared her unfortunate victims if she had just washed her hands before handling food.

Thanks to years of travel at other people's expense, I have a lifetime supply of soaps, small bottles of shampoo, aromatic lotions, sewing kits, and shoe mitts. I have over eleven hundred shower caps and require now only a reason to use them. I am so well prepared financially that I have money in a range

a nivel atómico, en cierto sentido somos eternos.

properispomenon.

Yucatán in Mexico means "What?" or "What are you saying?"—the reply given by the natives to the first Spanish conquistadors to fetch up on their shores. The

at least thirty-eight theories have been put forward to explain why people took to living in communities: that they were driven to it by climatic change, or by a wish to stay near their dead, or by a powerful desire to brew and drink beer, which could only be indulged by staying in one place.

Look, if I get shot, do me a favor. Call my brother and tell him there's $10,000 buried in a coffee can under his front lawn." "You buried $10,000 under your brother's front lawn?" "No, of course not, but he's a little prick and it would serve him right. Let's go.

Whatever was on your shopping list—linseed oil, two-inch masonry nails, coal scuttle, small can of Brasso metal polish—Mr. Morley had it. I am sure if you said to him, "I need 125 yards of razor wire, a ship's anchor, and a dominatrix outfit in a size eight," he would find them for you after rooting around for a few minutes among bird feeders and bags of bone meal. Mr.

Jonathan Bate quotes a couplet from Cymbeline, "Golden lads and girls all must, / As chimney sweepers, come to dust

plan ahead. '[The] keys to success are to plan ahead, to choose manageable recipes and to cook in batches' (The New York Times). Always tautological. Would you plan behind?

Do you know," he said, "it's twenty years since you wrote Notes from a Small Island?" (This was my first book about Britain. It did awfully well there.) "Twenty years?" I replied, amazed at how much past one can accumulate without any effort at all.

Anyway, as should be obvious, his ability to write or not could have had absolutely no bearing on the capabilities of his children.

advance planning. The advance in advance planning is always redundant. All planning must be done in advance.

John was prosecuted (or threatened with prosecution—the records are sometimes a touch unclear) for trading in wool and for money-lending, both highly illegal activities.

WHEN I was brand new to Britain and everything was still a mystery to me, I went with an English friend to Brighton for the day, and there I saw my first seaside pier. The idea of constructing a runway to nowhere was one that would never have occurred to me.