803 Quotes by Bill Bryson

Getting old is the surest route to dying.

Boston’s freeway system is insane. It was clearly designed by a person who had spent his childhood crashing toy trains.

The Forest Service is truly an extraordinary institution. A lot of people, seeing that word forest in the title, assume it has something to do with looking after trees. In fact, no – though that was the original plan.

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.

Even Scientific American entered the fray with an article proposing that the person portrayed in the famous Martin Droeshout engraving might actually be – I weep to say it – Elizabeth I.

I also said no to a first-aid kit, sewing kit, anti-snake-bite kit, $12 emergency whistle, and small orange plastic shovel for burying one’s poop, on the grounds that these were unnecessary, too expensive, or invited ridicule.

But I got a great deal else from the experience. I learned to pitch a tent and sleep beneath the stars. For a brief, proud period I was slender and fit. I gained a profound respect for the wilderness and nature and the benign dark power of woods. I understand now, in a way I never did before, the colossal scale of the world. I found patience and fortitude that I didn’t know I had. I discovered an America that millions of people scarcely know exists. I made a friend. I came home.

The amount of energy actually liberated in the burning of these fossil fuels is tiny by planetary scales – ten terawatts or so a year, not that much more than the nuga-tory contribution made by the tides. But the side effects are huge.

The National Park Service actually has something of a tradition of making things extinct.