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
edge happened path vanished wood
. . . I happened upon a path that vanished into a wood on the edge of town.
somebody
I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.
dad emily full grew
I grew up in Des Moines. My dad had a house full of books, things like P.G. Wodehouse books and 'Wuthering Heights' by Emily Bronte.
determined english gives pleasure quiet sort
Nothing gives the English more pleasure, in a quiet but determined sort of way, than to do things oddly.
ancient background birth channel complain cosmic dancing next percent radiation remember static television time tune watch
Incidentally, disturbance from cosmic background radiation is something we have all experienced. Tune your television to any channel it doesn't receive, and about 1 percent of the dancing static you see is accounted for by this ancient remnant of the Big Bang. The next time you complain that there is nothing on, remember that you can always watch the birth of the universe.
among beach bet call material mixed occur particular pile question solid stands stood thousands till time took
Among the many thousands of things that I have never been able to understand, one in particular stands out. That is the question of who was the first person who stood by a pile of sand and said, "You know, I bet if we took some of this and mixed it with a little potash and heated it, we could make a material that would be solid and yet transparent. We could call it glass." Call me obtuse, but you could stand me on a beach till the end of time and never would it occur to me to try to make it into windows.
eat grew night stay straight
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.
angeles bank checking clerk los money robber
A bank robber in Los Angeles told the clerk not to give him cash, but to deposit the money in his checking account.
couples found occasion permanent presented themselves third
Up to a third of bundling couples found themselves presented with a permanent souvenir of the occasion
abandoning attempt comforts eagerly fly futile home largely left lost money odd quantities strange time tourism vast
What an odd thing tourism is. You fly off to a strange land, eagerly abandoning all the comforts of home, and then expend vast quantities of time and money in a largely futile attempt to recapture the comforts that you wouldn't have lost if you hadn't left home in the first place.
mind too-late gone
That's the trouble with losing your mind; by the time it's gone, it's too late to get it back.
oats earth corn
Out of the thirty thousand types of edible plants thought to exist on Earth, just eleven—corn, rice, wheat, potatoes, cassava, sorghum, millet, beans, barley, rye, and oats—account for 93 percent of all that humans eat, and every one of them was first cultivated by our Neolithic ancestors.
home thinking average
Your pillow alone may be home to 40 million bed mites. (To them your head is just one large oily bon-bon). And don't think a clean pillow-case will make a difference... Indeed, if your pillow is six years old--which is apparently about the average age for a pillow--it has been estimated that one-tenth of its weight will be made up of sloughed skin, living mites, dead mites and mite dung.
kings rain coffee
I ordered a coffee and a little something to eat and savored the warmth and dryness. Somewhere in the background Nat King Cole sang a perky tune. I watched the rain beat down on the road outside and told myself that one day this would be twenty years ago.