Bill Bryson Quotes

All too often over-looked in discussions of the matter is that at the root of the bias-free language movement lies a commendable sentiment -to make language less wounding or demeaning to those whose sex, race, physical condition or circumstances leave them vulnerable to the raw power of words… this is a matter that deserves rather […]

For a long time it puzzled me how something so expensive, so leading edge, could be so useless, and then it occurred to me that a computer is a stupid machine with the ability to do incredibly smart things, while computer programmers are smart people with the ability to do incredibly stupid things. They are, […]

We used to build civilizations. Now we build shopping malls.

You could see in an instant that she had been the local good-time girl since about 1931. She had ‘ready for sex’ written all over her face, but ‘better bring a paper bag’ written all over her body.

It is not even possible to say quite where the outback is. To Australians anything vaguely rural is “the bush”. At some indeterminate point “the bush” becomes “the outback”. Push on for another 200 miles or so and eventually you come to bush again, and then a city, and then the sea. And that’s Australia.

Black bears rarely attack. But here’s the thing. Sometimes they do. All bears are agile, cunning and immensely strong, and they are always hungry. If they want to kill you and eat you, they can, and pretty much whenever they want. That doesn’t happen often, but – and here is the absolutely salient point – […]

To my mind, the only possible pet is a cow. Cows love you… They will listen to your problems and never ask a thing in return. They will be your friends forever. And when you get tired of them, you can kill and eat them. Perfect.