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'm not a natural story-teller. Put a keyboard in front of me and I'm fine, but stand me up in front of an audience and I'm actually quite shy and reserved.
I wish I could adjust my voice, but it's just what's happened to me. It's because I've lived abroad for a long time, and my wife is English and my kids all have English accents, and every voice I hear is English. I've never intentionally changed my accent at all.
I understand cricket - what's going on, the scoring - but I can't understand why.
America is a great disappointment to me. As I said in one of my books, other societies create civilisations; we build shopping malls.
There is no such thing, incidentally, as one kudo.
Hardly anyone ever leaves. This is because Des Moines is the most powerful hypnotic known to man. Outside town there is a big sign that says, WELCOME TO DES MOINES. THIS IS WHAT DEATH IS LIKE. There isn't really. I just made that up. But the place does get a grip on you.
I had to drive to Minneapolis once, and went on a back road just to see the country. But there was nothing to see. It's just flat and hot, and full of corn and soybeans and hogs. Every once in a while you come across a farm or some dead little town where the liveliest thing is the flies.
Cheapness is a great virtue.
Houses aren't refuges from history. They are where history ends up.
The remarkable position in which we find ourselves is that we don't actually know what we actually know.
I had always thought that once you grew up you could do anything you wanted - stay up all night or eat ice-cream straight out of the container.
Boston's freeway system is insane. It was clearly designed by a person who had spent his childhood crashing toy trains.
The great failure in education, much of the time, is the lack of excitement and stimulus
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.