803 Quotes by Bill Bryson

The most remarkable part of all is your DNA. You have a metre of it packed into every cell, and so many cells that if you formed all the DNA in your body into a single fine strand it would stretch ten billion miles, to beyond Pluto. Think of it: there is enough of you to leave the solar system. You are in the most literal sense cosmic.

Every atom you possess has almost certainly passed through several stars and been part of millions of organisms on its way to becoming you.

Every second a hundred bolts of lightning streak to Earth across the globe as the electric charges that build up within storm clouds are attracted by the positively charged ground. Earth experiences about 40,000 thunderstorms a day.

We are only beginning to understand the importance and nature of a woman’s vaginal microbiome. Babies born by Cesarean section are robbed of this initial wash. The consequences for the baby can be profound. Various studies have found that people born by C-section have substantially increased risks for type 1 diabetes, asthma, celiac disease, and even obesity and an eightfold greater risk of developing allergies.

Of all the things I am not very good at, living in the real world is perhaps the most outstanding. I am constantly filled with wonder at the number of things that other people do without any evident difficulty that are pretty much beyond me.

I understand cricket – what’s going on, the scoring – but I can’t understand why.

Norfolk is full of medieval churches – it has 659 of them, more per square mile than anywhere else in the world.

Mrs. Lindbergh declined all pleas to kiss or embrace her son, explaining that they came from “an undemonstrative Nordic race,” which in her case was wholly untrue.

If there’s one thing the AT teaches, it is low-level ecstasy – something we could all do with more of in our lives.