Bill Bryson

My first rule of consumerism is never to buy anything you can't make your children carry. ”

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. ”

If you drive to, say, Shenandoah National Park, or the Great Smoky Mountains, you'll get some appreciation for the scale and beauty of the outdoors. When you walk into it, then you see it in a completely different way. You discover it in a much slower, more majestic sort of way. ”

In any area of human endeavour, there is going to be mediocrity. You're going to find people who get money that they shouldn't get. ”

I could give you a long list of things I like about Britain, but essentially what it comes down to is that I feel about Britain the same way I feel about my wife. I'm crazy about my wife - we just kind of suit each other. I wouldn't say that she's the most fantastic human being that's ever lived, but she is for me. ”

Roads get wider and busier and less friendly to pedestrians. And all of the development based around cars, like big sprawling shopping malls. Everything seems to be designed for the benefit of the automobile and not the benefit of the human being. ”

I can't imagine there has ever been a more gratifying time or place to be alive than America in the 1950s. No country had ever known such prosperity. ”

I have long known that it is part of God's plan for me to spend a little time with each of the most stupid people on earth. ”

In 1927, if you were stuck with idle time, reading is what you did. It's no accident that the 'Book-of-the-Month Club' and 'The Literary Guild' were founded in that period as well as a lot of magazines, like 'Reader's Digest,' 'Time,' and 'The New Yorker.' ”

The world is very lucky to have America. It's got to be the first time in the whole history of the planet that a country has been the dominant force in the world and it has actually been a force for good... America really deserves more credit. ”