Bill Bryson

“It is a curious feature of our existence that we come from a planet that is very good at promoting life but even better at extinguishing it.”

“The worst thing about being a tourist is having other tourists recognize you as a tourist.”

“What is it about maps? I could look at them all day.”

“To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.”

“Physics is really nothing more than a search for ultimate simplicity, but so far all we have is a kind of elegant messiness.”

“I can't think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything.”

“Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment.”

“Of all the things I am not very good at, living in the real world is perhaps the most outstanding.”

“I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.”

“Energy is liberated matter, matter is energy waiting to happen.”

“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.”

“It's an unnerving thought that we may be the living universe's supreme achievement and its worst nightmare simultaneously.”

“There are three stages in scientific discovery. First, people deny that it is true. Then they deny that it is important. Finally, they credit the wrong person.”

“The first lesson of evolution is that nothing lasts forever.”

“Hunters will tell you that a moose is a wily and ferocious forest creature. Nonsense. A moose is a cow drawn by a three-year-old.”