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If This Book Has A Lesson, It Is That We Are Awfully Lucky To Be Here-and By 'we' I Mean Every Living Thing. To Attain Any Kind Of Life In This Universe Of Ours Appears To Be Quite An Achievement. As Humans We Are Doubly Lucky, Of Course: We Enjoy Not Only The Privilege Of Existence But Also The Singular Ability To Appreciate It And Even, In A Multitude Of Ways, To Make It Better. It Is A Talent We Have Only Barely Begun To Grasp.
-Bill Bryson
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If This Book Has

Bill Bryson
If This Book Has A Lesson, It Is That We Are Awfully Lucky To Be Here-and By 'we' I Mean Every Living Thing. To Attain Any Kind Of Life In This Universe Of Ours Appears To Be Quite An Achievement. As Humans We Are Doubly Lucky, Of Course: We Enjoy Not Only The Privilege Of Existence But Also The Singular Ability To Appreciate It And Even, In A Multitude Of Ways, To Make It Better. It Is A Talent We Have Only Barely Begun To Grasp.
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And I Find Chopsticks Frankly Distressing. Am I Alone In Thinking It Odd That A People Ingenious Enough To Invent Paper, Gunpowder, Kites And Any Number Of Other Useful Objects, And Who Have A Noble History Extending Back 3,000 Years Haven't Yet Worked Out That A Pair Of Knitting Needles Is No Way To Capture Food?
Food
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I Can't Fix The World. If You Want To Make A Difference In Life, You Have To Direct Your Energies In A Focused Way.
Differences
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Australians Are Very Unfair In This Way. They Spend Half Of Any Conversation Insisting That The Country's Dangers Are Vastly Overrated And That There's Nothing To Worry About, And The Other Half Telling You How Six Months Ago Their Uncle Bob Was Driving To Mudgee When A Tiger Snake Slid Out From Under The Dashboard And Bit Him On The Groin, But That It's Okay Now Because He's Off The Life Support Machine And They've Discovered He Can Communicate With Eye Blinks.
Country
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It Isn't Easy To Become A Fossil. ... Only About One Bone In A Billion, It Is Thought, Becomes Fossilized. If That Is So, It Means That The Complete Fossil Legacy Of All The Americans Alive Today - That's 270 Million People With 206 Bones Each - Will Only Be About 50 Bones, One-quarter Of A Complete Skeleton. That's Not To Say, Of Course, That Any Of These Bones Will Ever Actually Be Found.
Mean
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Every Twenty Minutes On The Appalachian Trail, Katz And I Walked Farther Than The Average American Walks In A Week. For 93 Percent Of All Trips Outside The Home, For Whatever Distance Or Whatever Purpose, Americans Now Get In A Car. On Average The Total Walking Of An American These Days - That's Walking Of All Types: From Car To Office, From Office To Car, Around The Supermarket And Shopping Malls - Adds Up To 1.4 Miles A Week, Barely 350 Yards A Day.
Distance
Home
Average
Our Instinct May Be To See The Impossibility Of Tracking Everything Down As Frustrating, Dispiriting, Perhaps Even Appalling, But It Can Just As Well Be Viewed As Almost Unbearably Exciting. We Live On A Planet That Has A More Or Less Infinite Capacity To Surprise. What Reasoning Person Could Possibly Want It Any Other Way?
May
Want
Way
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.
Life
Summer
Travel
A Sign In The Yard Of A Church Next Door Said Christ Is The Answer. (the Question, Of Course, Is: What Do You Say When You Strike Your Thumb With A Hammer?)
Doors
Church
Yards
Because We Humans Are Big And Clever Enough To Produce And Utilize Antibiotics And Disinfectants, It Is Easy To Convince Ourselves That We Have Banished Bacteria To The Fringes Of Existence. Don't You Believe It. Bacteria May Not Build Cities Or Have Interesting Social Lives, But They Will Be Here When The Sun Explodes. This Is Their Planet, And We Are On It Only Because They Allow Us To Be.
Clever
Believe
Cities
On The Dashboard Of Our Family Car Is A Shallow Indentation About The Size Of A Paperback Book. If You Are Looking For Somewhere To Put Your Sunglasses Or Spare Change, It Is The Obvious Place, And It Works Extremely Well, I Must Say, So Long As The Car Is Not Actually Moving. However, As Soon As You Put The Car In Motion ... Everything Slides Off ... It Can Hold Nothing That Has Not Been Nailed To It. So I Ask You: What Then Is It For?
Moving
Book
Long
If You Go Out On The Appalachian Trail, You Have To Bring So Much More Equipment - A Tent, Sleeping Bag - But If You Go Hiking In England, Or Europe, Generally, Towns And Villages Are Near Enough Together At The End Of The Day You Can Always Go To A Nice Little Inn And Have A Hot Bath And Something To Drink.
Nice
Sleep
Europe
Take A Moment From Time To Time To Remember That You Are Alive. I Know This Sounds A Trifle Obvious, But It Is Amazing How Little Time We Take To Remark Upon This Singular And Gratifying Fact. By The Most Astounding Stroke Of Luck An Infinitesimal Portion Of All The Matter In The Universe Came Together To Create You And For The Tiniest Moment In The Great Span Of Eternity You Have The Incomparable Privilege To Exist.
Luck
Together
Sound
Perhaps It's My Natural Pessimism, But It Seems That An Awfully Large Part Of Travel These Days Is To See Things While You Still Can.
Travel
Memorable
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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 - Once Would Be Enough.
Strong
Black
Would Be
I Had Spent The Whole Of My Savings ... On A Suit For The Wedding - A Remarkable Piece Of Apparel With Lapels That Had Been Modelled On The Tail Fins Of A 1957 Coupe De Ville And Trousers So Copiously Flared That When I Walked You Didn't See My Legs Move.
Fashion
Moving
Pieces
I See Litter As Part Of A Long Continuum Of Anti-social Behaviour.
Long
Behaviour
Social
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.
Stars
Home
Sleep
The Universe Is Not Only Queerer Than We Suppose; It Is Queerer Than We Can Suppose
Funny
Knowledge
Science
This Was 1990, The Year That Communism Died In Europe And It Seemed Strange To Me That In All The Words That Were Written About The Fall Of The Iron Curtain, Nobody Anywhere Lamented That It Was The End Of A Noble Experiment. I Know That Communism Never Worked And I Would Have Disliked Living Under It Myself But None The Less It Seems That There Was A Kind Of Sadness In The Thought That The Only Economic System That Appeared To Work Was One Based On Self Interest And Greed.
Fall
Sadness
Self
Disassemble The Cells Of A Sponge (by Passing Them Through A Sieve, For Instance), Then Dump Them Into A Solution, And They Will Find Their Way Back Together And Build Themselves Into A Sponge Again. You Can Do This To Them Over And Over, And They Will Doggedly Reassemble Because, Like You And Me And Every Other Living Thing, They Have One Overwhelming Impulse: To Continue To Be.
Cells
Together
Way
Columbus Real Achievement Was Managing To Cross The Ocean Successfully In Both Directions. Though An Accomplished Enough Mariner, He Was Not Terribly Good At A Great Deal Else, Especially Geography, The Skill That Would Seem Most Vital In An Explorer.
Real
Ocean
Discovery
Strange As It May Seem, Wrote Richard Feynman, We Understand The Distribution Of Matter In The Interior Of The Sun Far Better Than We Understand The Interior Of The Earth.
Richard Feynman
Earth
May
Four Times I Was Honked At For Having The Temerity To Proceed Through Town Without The Benefit Of Metal.
Journey
Hiking
Benefits
For A Long Time, I'd Been Vaguely Fascinated By The Idea That Charles Lindbergh Flew The Atlantic And Babe Ruth Hit 60 Home Runs In The Same Summer.
Summer
Running
Home
Traveling Makes You Realize What An Immeasurably Nice Place Much Of America Could Be If Only People Possessed The Same Instinct For Preservation As They Do In Europe.
Travel
Nice
Europe
Physics Is Really Nothing More Than A Search For Ultimate Simplicity, But So Far All We Have Is A Kind Of Elegant Messiness.
Simplicity
Kind
Physics
The Upshot Of All This Is That We Live In A Universe Whose Age We Can't Quite Compute, Surrounded By Stars Whose Distances We Don't Altogether Know, Filled With Matter We Can't Identify, Operating In Conformance With Physical Laws Whose Properties We Don’t Truly Understand.
Stars
Distance
Law
The Real Problem You Get With Humour Is That You Only Have So Many Kinds Of Jokes Within You, And You Mine That Vein A Lot. This Isn't Just Common To Me; It's Anybody Who's Funny.
Real
Veins
Common
In The Countryside, Litter Doesn't Have A Friend. It Doesn't Have Anybody Who's Saying, 'wait A Minute, This Is Really Starting To Get Out Of Control.'
Waiting
Starting
Minutes
Everywhere Throughout New England You Find Old, Tumbledown Field Walls, Often In The Middle Of The Deepest, Most Settled- Looking Woods- A Reminder Of Just How Swiftly Nature Reclaims The Land In America.
Wall
Land
America
Nearly A Quarter Of American Men Were In The Armed Forces. The Rest Were In School, In Prison, Or Were George W. Bush.
School
Men
Prison
Maine Is Wonderful. It Can Be Very Hard. I Mean, If You Look At The Profile Maps It Doesn't Look It, But Somehow When You Get Out There It's Really Steep And Hard.
Mean
Looks
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We Are So Used To The Notion Of Our Own Inevitability As Life's Dominant Species That It Is Hard To Grasp That We Are Here Only Because Of Timely Extraterrestrial Bangs And Other Random Flukes. The One Thing We Have In Common With All Other Living Things Is That For Nearly Four Billions Years Our Ancestors Have Managed To Slip Through A Series Of Closing Doors Every Time We Needed Them To.
Doors
Years
Four
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.
Stupid
Long
People
But What Is Life To A Lichen ? Yet Its Impulse To Exist, To Be, Is Every Bit As Strong As Ours Arguably Even Stronger. If I Were Told That I Had To Spend Decades Being A Furry Growth On A Rock In The Woods, I Believe I Would Lose The Will To Go On.
Strong
Believe
Rocks
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, In Short, A Perfect Match.
Stupid
Smart
Technology
To An American The Whole Purpose Of Living, The One Constant Confirmation Of Continued Existence, Is To Cram As Much As Sensual Pleasure As Possible Into One's Mouth More Or Less Continuously. Gratification, Instant And Lavish, Is A Birthright
Sensual
Purpose
Mouths
So, If People Didn’t Settle Down To Take Up Farming, Why Then Did They Embark On This Entirely New Way Of Living? We Have No Idea – Or Actually, We Have Lots Of Ideas, But We Don’t Know If Any Of Them Are Right. According To Felipe Fernández-armesto, At Least Thirty-eight Theories Have Been Put Forward To Explain Why People Took To Living In Communities: That They Were Driven To It By Climatic Change, Or By A Wish To Stay Near Their Dead, Or By A Powerful Desire To Brew And Drink Beer, Which Could Only Be Indulged By Staying In One Place.
Powerful
Beer
Eight
Isn´t It Strange How Wealth Is Always Wasted On The Rich?
Strange
Wealth
Rich
Woods Are Not Like Other Spaces. To Begin With, They Are Cubic. Their Trees Surround You, Loom Over You, Press In From All Sides. Woods Choke Off Views & Leave You Muddled & Without Bearings. They Make You Feel Small & Confused & Vulnerable, Like A Small Child Lost In A Crowd Of Strange Legs. Stand In A Desert Or Prairie & You Know You Are In A Big Space. Stand In The Woods And You Only Sense It. They Are Vast, Featureless Nowhere. And They Are Alive.
Children
Confused
Views
In France, A Chemist Named Pilatre De Rozier Tested The Flammability Of Hydrogen By Gulping A Mouthful And Blowing Across An Open Flame, Proving At A Stroke That Hydrogen Is Indeed Explosively Combustible And That Eyebrows Are Not Necessarily A Permanent Feature Of One's Face.
Science
Flames
Eyebrows
Britain Still Has The Most Reliably Beautiful Countryside Of Anywhere In The World. I Would Hate To Be Part Of The Generation That Allowed That To Be Lost.
Beautiful
Hate
Generations
There Is No Reason Why We Shouldn't Be Able To Split An Infinitive, Any More Than We Should Forsake Instant Coffee And Air Travel Because They Weren't Available To The Romans.
Coffee
Air
Splits
In My Day, The Principal Concerns Of University Students Were Sex, Smoking Dope, Rioting And Learning. Learning Was Something You Did Only When The First Three Weren't Available.
Sex
Dope
University Students
To Me, The Greatest Invention Of My Lifetime Is The Laptop Computer And The Fact That I Can Be Working On A Book And Be In An Airport Lounge, In A Hotel Room, And Continue Working; I Fire Up My Laptop, And I'm In Exactly The Same Place I Was When I Left Home - That, To Me, Is A Miracle.
Book
Home
Fire
It Was One Of Those Sumptuous Days When The World Is Full Of Autumn Muskiness And Tangy, Crisp Perfection: Vivid Blue Sky, Deep Green Fields, Leaves In A Thousand Luminous Hues. It Is A Truly Astounding Sight When Every Tree In A Landscape Becomes Individual, When Each Winding Back Highway And Plump Hillside Is Suddenly And Infinitely Splashed With Every Sharp Shade That Nature Can Bestow - Flaming Scarlet, Lustrous Gold, Throbbing Vermilion, Fiery Orange.
Autumn
Green Fields
Sight
America Is A Great Disappointment To Me. As I Said In One Of My Books, Other Societies Create Civilisations; We Build Shopping Malls.
Disappointment
Book
Shopping
The Great Failure In Education, Much Of The Time, Is The Lack Of Excitement And Stimulus
Excitement
Stimulus
It Is Not True That The English Invented Cricket As A Way Of Making All Other Human Endeavors Look Interesting And Lively; That Was Merely An Unintended Side Effect... It Is The Only Sport That Incorporates Meal Breaks. It Is The Only Sport That Shares Its Name With An Insect. It Is The Only Sport In Which Spectators Burn As Many Calories As Players - More If They Are Moderately Restless.
Sports
Player
Names
I Don't Want To Go And Start Trying To Make Jokes In Places Like India, Tanzania Or Iraq. Afghanistan Is Not A Funny Place.
Iraq
Trying
India
Tune Your Television To Any Channel It Doesn't Receive And About 1 Percent Of The Dancing Static You See Is Accounted For By This Ancient Remnant Of The Big Bang. The Next Time You Complain That There Is Nothing On, Remember That You Can Always Watch The Birth Of The Universe.
Dancing
Tunes
Watches
Absolute Brain Size Does Not Tell You Everything Or Possibly Sometimes Even Much. Elephants And Whales Both Have Brains Larger Than Ours, But You Wouldn't Have Much Trouble Outwitting Them In Contract Negotiations.
Whales
Elephants
Brain
When The Poet Paul Valery Once Asked Albert Einstein If He Kept A Notebook To Record His Ideas, Einstein Looked At Him With Mild But Genuine Surprise. "oh, That's Not Necessary," He Replied . "it's So Seldom I Have One.
Notebook
Ideas
Records
It Was An Especially Wonderful Time To Be A Noisy Moron.
Wonderful
Moron
Noisy
People Don't Talk Like This, Theytalklikethis. Syllables, Words, Sentences Run Together Like A Watercolour Left In The Rain. To Understand What Anyone Is Saying To Us We Must Separate These Noises Into Words And The Words Into Sentences So That We Might In Our Turn Issue A Stream Of Mixed Sounds In Response.
Running
Rain
Issues
When The Duke [w.j.c. Scott-bentinck] Died, His Heirs Found All Of The Aboveground Rooms Devoid Of Furnishings Except For One Chamber In The Middle Of Which Sat The Duke's Commode. The Main Hall Was Mysteriously Floor Less. Most Of The Rooms Were Painted Pink. The One Upstairs Room In Which The Duke Had Resided Was Packed To The Ceiling With Hundreds Of Green Boxes, Each Of Which Contained A Single Dark Brown Wig. This Was, In Short, A Man Worth Getting To Know.
Dark
Men
Dukes
Finally, This Being America, There Is The Constant Possibility Of Murder.
America
Murder
Possibility
You May Find That Your Parents Are The Most Delightful People, But You Don't Want To Live With Them.
People
Parent
May
He Had The Sort Of Face That Makes You Realize God Does Have A Sense Of Humor.
Doe
Faces
Sense Of Humor
It Is Not As If Farming Brought A Great Improvement In Living Standards Either. A Typical Hunter-gatherer Enjoyed A More Varied Diet And Consumed More Protein And Calories Than Settled People, And Took In Five Times As Much Viatmin C As The Average Person Today.
Average
People
Typical
Consider The Lichen. Lichens Are Just About The Hardiest Visible Organisms On Earth, But The Least Ambitious.
Ambitious
Earth
Visible
Every Dog On The Face Of The Earth Wants Me Dead.
Dog
Earth
Want
Germans Are Flummoxed By Humor, The Swiss Have No Concept Of Fun, The Spanish Think There Is Nothing At All Ridiculous About Eating Dinner At Midnight, And The Italians Should Never, Ever Have Been Let In On The Invention Of The Motor Car.
Inspirational
Sarcastic
Fun
Making English Grammar Conform To Latin Rules Is Like Asking People To Play Baseball Using The Rules Of Football.
Baseball
Football
Latin
18th Century Scientists, The French In Particular, Seldom Did Things Simply If An Absurdly Demanding Alternative Was Available.
Alternatives
Scientist
Century
Anyone Who Has Read My Books Will Know That I Don't Tend To Use Guides When I Am Travelling. It's Not A Pride Thing, But It Is Certainly A Fact.
Book
Pride
Use
As A Rule Of Thumb, I Would Submit That If You Need To Call Your Floss Provider, For Any Reason, You Are Probably Not Ready For This Level Of Oral Hygiene.
Hygiene
Needs
Thumbs
If A Potato Can Produce Vitamin C, Why Can't We? Within The Animal Kingdom Only Humans And Guinea Pigs Are Unable To Synthesize Vitamin C In Their Own Bodies. Why Us And Guinea Pigs? No Point Asking. Nobody Knows.
Animal
Pigs
Asking
Every Kid I Knew Had A Father With A Little Stash Of Men's Magazines Which The Father Thought Was Secret And Which The Kid Knew All About.
Father
Kids
Men
The People Are Immensely Likable— Cheerful, Extrovert, Quick-witted, And Unfailingly Obliging. Their Cities Are Safe And Clean And Nearly Always Built On Water. They Have A Society That Is Prosperous, Well Ordered, And Instinctively Egalitarian. The Food Is Excellent. The Beer Is Cold. The Sun Nearly Always Shines. There Is Coffee On Every Corner. Life Doesn't Get Much Better Than This.
Coffee
Beer
Cities
Suddenly, In The Space Of A Moment, I Realized What It Was That I Loved About Britain - Which Is To Say, All Of It. Every Last Bit Of It, Good And Bad - Old Churches, Country Lanes, People Saying 'mustn't Grumble,' And 'i'm Terribly Sorry But,' People Apologizing To Me When I Conk Them With A Careless Elbow, Milk In Bottles, Beans On Toast, Haymaking In June, Seaside Piers, Ordnance Survey Maps, Tea And Crumpets, Summer Showers And Foggy Winter Evenings - Every Bit Of It.
Summer
Country
Sorry
What Is It About Maps? I Could Look At Them All Day, Earnestly Studying The Names Of Towns And Villages I Have Never Heard Of And Will Never Visit.
Travel
Names
Looks
The Best That Can Be Said For Norwegian Television Is That It Gives You The Sensation Of A Coma Without The Worry And Inconvenience.
Giving
Worry
Television
Science Has Been Quite Embattled. It's The Most Important Thing There Is. An Arts Graduate Is Not Going To Fix Global Warming. They May Do Other Valuable Things, But They Are Not Going To Fix The Planet Or Cure Cancer Or Get Rid Of Malaria.
Art
Cancer
Important
Look At A Globe And What You Are Seeing Really Is A Snapshot Of The Continents As They Have Been For Just One-tenth Of 1 Per Cent Of The Earths History.
Looks
Snapshots
Earth
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.
Discovery
People
Important
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 In Order To Perpetuate The Only Possible Sequence Of Hereditary Combinations That Could Result -- Eventually, Astoundingly, And All Too Briefly -- In You.
Order
Quests
Tiny
There Seemed To Be A Mystifying Universal Conspiracy Among Textbook Authors To Make Certain The Material They Dealt With Never Strayed Too Near The Realm Of The Mildly Interesting And Was Always At Least A Long-distance Phone Call From The Frankly Interesting.
Distance
Phones
Long
I Always Wanted To Do A Baseball Book; I Love Baseball. The Problem Is That A Very Large Part Of My Following Is In Non-baseball Playing Countries.
Baseball
Country
Book
Traveling Is More Fun - Hell, Life Is More Fun - If You Can Treat It As A Series Of Impulses.
Fun
Life Is
Hell
I Was Heading To Nebraska. Now There's A Sentence You Don't Want To Say Too Often If You Can Possibly Help It.
Nebraska
Want
Helping
Still, I Never Really Mind Bad Service In A Restaurant. It Makes Me Feel Better About Not Leaving A Tip.
Feel Better
Leaving
Mind
It Was An Odd Situation. For A Century And A Half, Men Got Rid Of Their Own Hair, Which Was Perfectly Comfortable, And Instead Covered Their Heads With Something Foreign And Uncomfortable. Very Often It Was Actually Their Own Hair Made Into A Wig. People Who Couldn't Afford Wigs Tried To Make Their Hair Look Like A Wig.
Men
Hair
People
Have You Ever Seen Glenn Beck In Operation? It Is The Most Terrifying Thing. It's So Bad That You Think He's Going To Announce In A Minute That It's All A Great Con. He Makes Sarah Palin Look Reasonable And Steady.
Thinking
Looks
Minutes
I Wish I Could Adjust My Voice, But It's Just What's Happened To Me. It's Because I've Lived Abroad For A Long Time, And My Wife Is English And My Kids All Have English Accents, And Every Voice I Hear Is English. I've Never Intentionally Changed My Accent At All.
Kids
Voice
Long
... It Occurred To Me That Never Again Would He Be Seven Years, One Month And Six Days Old, So We Had Better Catch These Moments While We Can.
Years
Months
Six
I Come Des Moines. Somebody Had To.
Des Moines
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.
Shy
Stories
Keyboards
Coming Back To Your Native Land After An Absence Of Many Years Is A Surprisingly Unsettling Business, A Little Like Waking From A Long Coma. Time, You Discover, Has Wrought Changes That Leave You Feeling Mildly Foolish And Out Of Touch.
Years
Land
Long
Why Is It, I Wondered, That Old People Are Always So Self-centered And Excitable? But I Just Smiled Benignly And Stood Back, Comforted By The Thought That Soon They Would Be Dead.
Self
People
Would Be
After Years Of Patient Study (and With Cricket There Can Be No Other Kind), I Have Decided That There Is Nothing Wrong With The Game That The Introduction Of Golf Carts Wouldn't Fix In A Hurry.
Golf
Years
Games
Those Who Sniff Decay In Every Shift Of Sense Or Alteration Of Usage Do The Language No Service. Too Often For Such People The Notion Of Good English Has Less To Do With Expressing Ideas Clearly Than With Making Words Conform To Some Arbitrary Pattern.
Writing
Ideas
People
It Sometimes Occurs To Me That The British Have More Heritage Than Isgood For Them.
Heritage
Sometimes
British
South Dakota... Is Like The World's First Drive-through Sensory Deprivation Chamber.
World
Firsts
Deprivation
"croissant": However You Choose To Pronounce It At Home, It Is Perhaps Worth Nothing That Outside The United States, The Closer You Can Come To Saying "kwass-ohn," The Sooner You Can Expect To Be Presented With One.
Home
United States
Croissants
When I Was Growing Up I Used To Think That The Best Thing About Coming From Des Moines Was That It Meant You Didn't Come From Anywhere Else In Iowa. By Iowa Standards, Des Moines Is A Mecca Of Cosmopolitanism, A Dynamic Hub Of Wealth And Education, Where People Wear Three-piece Suits And Dark Socks, Often Simultaneously.
Growing Up
Dark
Thinking
But That's The Glory Of Foreign Travel, As Far As I Am Concerned. I Don't Want To Know What People Are Talking About. 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. Suddenly You Are Five Years Old Again. You Can't Read Anything, You Have Only The Most Rudimentary Sense Of How Things Work, You Can't Even Reliably Cross A Street Without Endangering Your Life. Your Whole Existence Becomes A Series Of Interesting Guesses.
Country
Travel
Memorable
I Turned To My Own Bunk And Examined It With A Kind Of Appalled Fascination. If The Mattress Stains Were Anything To Go By, A Previous User Had Not So Much Suffered From Incontinence As Rejoiced In It. He Had Evidently Included The Pillow In His Celebrations.
Travel
Fascination
Bunk
There Are Only Three Things That Can Kill A Farmer: Lightning, Rolling Over In A Tractor, And Old Age.
Age
Lightning
Rolling Along
As My Father Always Used To Tell Me, 'you See, Son, There's Always Someone In The World Worse Off Than You.' And I Always Used To Think, 'so?
Father
Son
Thinking
I Don't Know Whether I'm Misanthropic. It Seems To Me I'm Constantly Disappointed. I'm Very Easily Disappointed.
Misanthropic
Disappointed
Knows
I'm Definitely An American, Because I Grew Up Here. But I've Lived Very Happily In Britain.
Grew Up
Britain
Grew
As James Surowiecki Noted In A New Yorker Article, Given A Choice Between Developing Antibiotics That People Will Take Every Day For Two Weeks And Antidepressants That People Will Take Every Day For Ever, Drug Companies Not Surprisingly Opt For The Latter. Although A Few Antibiotics Have Been Toughened Up A Bit, The Pharmaceutical Industry Hasn't Given Us An Entirely New Antibiotic Since The 1970s.
Two
People
Choices
By The Time I Had Finished My Coffee And Returned To The Streets, The Rain Had Temporarily Abated, But The Streets Were Full Of Vast Puddles Where The Drains Where Unable To Cope With The Volume Of Water. Correct Me If I'm Wrong, But You Would Think That If One Nation Ought By Now To Have Mastered The Science Of Drainage, Britain Would Be It.
Rain
Coffee
Thinking
I Mused For A Few Moments On The Question Of Which Was Worse, To Lead A Life So Boring That You Are Easily Enchanted, Or A Life So Full Of Stimulus That You Are Easily Bored.
Bored
Boring
Moments
In The Morning I Awoke Early And Experienced That Sinking Sensation That Overcomes You When You First Open Your Eyes And Realize That Instead Of A Normal Day Ahead Of You, With Its Scatterings Of Simple Gratifications, You Are Going To Have A Day Without Even The Tiniest Of Pleasures; You Are Going To Drive Across Ohio.
Morning
Eye
Simple
The First Book I Did - The First Successful Book - Was A Kind Of A Travel Book, And Publishers In Britain Encouraged Me To Do More.
Book
Successful
Firsts
You Don't Have To Know Anything About Baseball To Respond To Babe Ruth Because He's Just This Magnificent Human Being. And A Really Good Story Because He Was This Kid Who Grew Up Essentially As An Orphan, You Know, Had A Tough Life, And Then He Became The Most Successful Baseball Player Ever. But He Was Also A Really Good Guy.
Baseball
Kids
Successful
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.
Inspirational
Funny
Country
Where I Grew Up, In Des Moines, Iowa, There Is Hardly Any Downtown Economic Activity Now. Everybody Shops In Malls - You Don't Find A Sense Of Community In Malls.
Iowa
Community
Downtown
Energy Is Liberated Matter, Matter Is Energy Waiting To Happen.
Waiting
Energy
Matter
More Than 300 Million People In The World Speak English And The Rest, It Sometimes Seems, Try To.
Speak English
People
Trying
A Third...candidate For Shakespearean Authorship Was Christopher Marlowe. He Was The Right Age (just Two Months Older Than Shakespeare), Had The Requisite Talent, And Would Certainly Have Had Ample Leisure After 1593, Assuming He Wasn't Too Dead To Work.
Two
Age
Leisure
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.
Shopping
Car
Friendly
I Had To Drive To Minneapolis Once, And Went On A Back Road Just To See The Country. But There Was Nothing To See. It's Just Flat And Hot, And Full Of Corn And Soybeans And Hogs. Every Once In A While You Come Across A Farm Or Some Dead Little Town Where The Liveliest Thing Is The Flies.
Country
Soybeans
Littles
Yes, U.s. Travelers Dress Better. The British Are Always So Conspicuous In Hot Climates. They Don't Seem To Wear Shorts. American Men Seem To Be Comfortable Wearing Hot-weather Clothing.
Men
Weather
Climate
We Used To Build Civilizations. Now We Build Shopping Malls.
Badass
Bad Ass
Civilization
Most Of The Time I Am Sunk In Thought, But At Some Point On Each Walk There Comes A Moment When I Look Up And Notice, With A Kind Of First-time Astonishment, The Amazing Complex Delicacy Of The Words, The Casual Ease With Which Elemental Things Come Together To Form A Composition That Is—whatever The Season, Wherever I Put My Besotted Gaze—perfect.
Perfect
Together
Firsts
I Think It's Only Right That Crazy People Should Have Their Own City, But I Cannot For The Life Of Me See Why A Sane Person Would Want To Go There.
Crazy
Thinking
Should Have
It Is Unthinkable To Have A British Countryside That Doesn't Have Actual Functioning Farmers Riding Tractors, Cows In Fields, Things Like That.
Riding
Cows
Fields
All The Things That Are Part Of Your Heritage Make You British - That Makes This Country What It Is. It's Part Of Your History. And Here, Unlike America, It's Still Living History.
Country
America
Heritage
Geologists Are Never At A Loss For Paperweights.
Loss
Geologist
England Was Full Of Words I'd Never Heard Before - Streaky Bacon, Short Back And Sides, Belisha Beacon, Serviettes, High Tea, Ice-cream Cornet.
Ice Cream
Tea
Sides
Being A Pessimist Is Just Such A Gloomy Way Of Looking At Things, So I Have To Hope For The Best - Life Wouldn't Be Worth Living If We Didn't Have Hope. And I Also Do Think That Human Beings Often Do Do Wonderful, Correct, Brilliant Things. So, On Balance, I'd Like To Be Optimistic About The Future.
Optimistic
Thinking
Balance
At A Conference Of Sociologists In America In 1977, Love Was Defined As "the Cognitive-affective State Characterized By Intrusive And Obsessive Fantasizing Concerning Reciprocity Of Amorant Feelings By The Object Of The Amorance." That Is Jargon - The Practice Of Never Calling A Spade A Spade When You Might Instead Call It A Manual Earth-restructuring Implement - And It Is One Of The Great Curses Of Modern English.
Practice
America
Feelings
Everything Seems To Be Designed For The Benefit Of The Automobile And Not The Benefit Of The Human Being.
Benefits
Malls
Automobile
I Love The Feeling Of Being Anonymous In A City I've Never Been Before.
Travel
Cities
Feelings
To My Surprise, I Felt A Certain Springy Keenness. I Was Ready To Hike. I Had Waited Months For This Day, After All, Even If It Had Been Mostly With Foreboding. I Wanted To See What Was Out There. All Over America Today People Would Be Dragging Themselves To Work, Stuck In Traffic Jams, Wreathed In Exhaust Smoke. I Was Going For A Walk In The Woods. I Was More Than Ready For This.
America
People
Would Be
I'm Quite Certain That If The Rest Of The World Vanished Overnight And The Development Of Cricket Were Left In Australian Hands, Within A Generation, The Players Would Be Wearing Shorts And Using The Bats To Hit Each Other, And The Thing Is, It'd Be A Much Better Game For It.
Player
Hands
Games
I Really Enjoy Going To A Library And Spending The Day Doing Research - To Me That Is The Most Pleasurable Part Of Writing The Science Book.
Book
Writing
Library
Physicists Are Atoms' Way Of Thinking About Atoms.
Thinking
Atoms
Way
In Three Minutes, 98 Percent Of All The Matter There Is Or Will Ever Be Has Been Produced. We Have A Universe
Three
Matter
Minutes
When You Tell An Iowan A Joke, You Can See A Kind Of Race Going On Between His Brain And His Expression.
Funny
Humor
Race
My First Rule Of Consumerism Is Never To Buy Anything You Can't Make Your Children Carry.
Children
Firsts
Consumerism
The Whole Of The Global Economy Is Based On Supplying The Cravings Of Two Per Cent Of The World's Population.
Two
Population
World
Because Time Moves More Slowly In Kid World ... It Goes On For Decades ... It Is Adult Life That Is Over In A Twinkling.
Moving
Kids
Adults
I Come From Des Moines. Someone Had To.
Des Moines
Cheapness Is A Great Virtue.
Virtue
Cheapness
There Is Something About The Momentum Of Travel That Makes You Want To Just Keep Moving, To Never Stop.
Moving
Momentum
Want
I Ordered A Coffee And A Little Something To Eat And Savored The Warmth And Dryness. Somewhere In The Background Nat King Cole Sang A Perky Tune. I Watched The Rain Beat Down On The Road Outside And Told Myself That One Day This Would Be Twenty Years Ago.
Kings
Rain
Coffee
Before, Prior To. There Is No Difference Between These Two Except Length And A Certain Affectedness On The Part Of 'prior To.' To Paraphrase Bernstein, If You Would Use 'posterior To' Instead Of 'after,' Then By All Means Use 'prior To' Instead Of 'before.
Mean
Two
Differences
I Can Wear A Baseball Cap; I Am Entitled To Wear A Baseball Cap. I Am Genetically Pre-disposed To Wear A Baseball Cap, Whereas Most English People Look Wrong In A Baseball Cap.
Baseball
People
Looks
[the Royal Society] Is Quite Simply The Voice Of Science In Britain. It Is Intellectually Rigorous, Not Afraid To Be Outspoken On Controversial Issues Such As Climate Change, But It Is Not Aggressively Secular Either, Insisting On A Single View Of The World. In Fact, There Are Plenty Of Eminent Scientists - Robert Winston, For Instance - Who Are Also Men Of Faith.
Faith
Science
Men
I Wanted To Quit And To Do This Forever, Sleep In A Bed And In A Tent, See What Was Over The Next Hill And Never See A Hill Again. All Of This All At Once, Every Moment, On The Trail Or Off.
Sleep
Forever
Bed
Hardly Anyone Ever Leaves. This Is Because Des Moines Is The Most Powerful Hypnotic Known To Man. Outside Town There Is A Big Sign That Says, Welcome To Des Moines. This Is What Death Is Like. There Isn't Really. I Just Made That Up. But The Place Does Get A Grip On You.
Powerful
Men
Doe
The Taipan Is The One To Watch Out For. It Is The Most Poisonous Snake On Earth, With A Lunge So Swift And A Venom So Potent That Your Last Mortal Utterance Is Likely To Be: "i Say, Is That A Sn--
Snakes
Utterance
Earth
In Terms Of Adaptability, Humans Are Pretty Amazingly Useless.
Useless
Adaptability
Term
It's An Unnerving Thought That We May Be The Living Universe's Supreme Achievement And Its Worst Nightmare Simultaneously.
Worst Nightmares
Achievement
May
When I Awoke It Was Daylight. The Inside Of My Tent Was Coated In A Curious Flaky Rime, Which I Realized After A Moment Was All Of My Nighttime Snores, Condensed And Frozen And Pasted To The Fabric, As If Into A Scrapbook Of Respiratory Memories.
Memories
Fabric
Frozen
If You Can Imagine A Man Having A Vasectomy Without Anesthetic To The Sound Of Frantic Sitar-playing, You Will Have Some Idea Of What Popular Turkish Music Is Like.
Men
Ideas
Sound
At The Foot Of The Mountain, The Park Ended And Suddenly All Was Squalor Again. I Was Once More Struck By This Strange Compartmentalization That Goes On In America -- A Belief That No Commercial Activities Must Be Allowed Inside The Park, But Permitting Unrestrained Development Outside, Even Though The Landscape There May Be Just As Outstanding. America Has Never Quite Grasped That You Can Live In A Place Without Making It Ugly, That Beauty Doesn't Have To Be Confined Behind Fences, As If A National Park Were A Sort Of Zoo For Nature.
Zoos
Feet
America
Christmas Tree Stands Are The Work Of The Devil And They Want You Dead.
Tree
Devil
Want
Very Little Of What America Does Is Actually Bad, And I Don't Think It Ever Does Anything Anywhere That Is Intentionally Bad. I Mean, Sometimes We Make Mistakes And Bad Judgments And Kind Of Back The Wrong Regimes And Things, But By And Large What America Does Is Really Good.
Mistake
Mean
Thinking
Taking A Scenic Route In Southeast Iowa Is Like Talking About A Good Barry Manilow Album. You Have To Make Certain Allowances.
Talking
Iowa
Albums
America Is A Very Seductive Place In Terms Of Lifestyle And Comfort, But It Wasn't For Me.
America
Seductive
Comfort
Entirely Incidentally, A Little-known Fact About Shakespeare Is That His Father Moved To Stratford-upon-avon From A Nearby Village Shortly Before His Son's Birth. Had He Not Done So, The Bard Of Avon Would Instead Be Known As The Rather Less Ringing Bard Of Snitterfield.
Father
Son
Done
Your Pillow Alone May Be Home To 40 Million Bed Mites. (to Them Your Head Is Just One Large Oily Bon-bon). And Don't Think A Clean Pillow-case Will Make A Difference... Indeed, If Your Pillow Is Six Years Old--which Is Apparently About The Average Age For A Pillow--it Has Been Estimated That One-tenth Of Its Weight Will Be Made Up Of Sloughed Skin, Living Mites, Dead Mites And Mite Dung.
Home
Thinking
Average
Book Tours Are Really Kind Of Fun. You Get To Stay In Nice Hotels, You Are Driven Everywhere In Big Silver Cars, You Are Treated As If You Are Much More Important Than You Are, You Can Eat Steak Three Times A Day At Someone Else's Expense, And You Get To Talk Endlessly About Yourself For Weeks At A Stretch.
Fun
Nice
Book
English Grammar Is So Complex And Confusing For The One Very Simple Reason That Its Rules And Terminology Are Based On Latin, A Language With Which It Has Precious Little In Common.
Latin
Simple
English Grammar
My First Rule Of Travel Is Never To Go To A Place That Sounds Like A Medical Condition And Critz Is Clearly An Incurable Disease Involving Flaking Skin.
Travel
Judging
Skins
It Is A Slightly Arresting Notion That If You Were To Pick Yourself Apart With Tweezers, One Atom At A Time, You Would Produce A Mound Of Fine Atomic Dust, None Of Which Had Ever Been Alive But All Of Which Had Once Been You.
Life
Science
Dust
Every Atom You Possess Has Almost Certainly Passed Through Several Stars And Been Part Of Millions Of Organisms On Its Way To Becoming You. We Are Each So Atomically Numberous And So Vigorously Recycled At Death That A Significant Number Of Our Atoms-up To A Billion For Each Of Us, It Has Been Suggested-probably Once Belonged To Shakespeare. A Billion More Each Came From Buddha And Genghis Khan And Beethoven, And Any Other Historical Figure You Care To Name.
Stars
Names
Numbers
I Have A Small Tattered Clipping That I Sometimes Carry With Meand Pull Out For Purposes Of Privateamusement. It's A Weather Forecast From Thewestern Daily Mail And It Says, In Toto: 'outlook: Dry And Warm, But Cooler With Some Rain.
Rain
Weather
Mail
Life Just Wants To Be; But It Doesn't Want To Be Much.
Want
Beulah Has A Husband?' I Know. It's A Miracle. There Can't Be More Than Two People On The Planet Who'd Be Willing To Sleep With Her, And Here We Are Both In The Same Town.
Husband
Sleep
Two
There Is Always A Little More Toothpaste In The Tube. Think About It.
Thinking
Littles
Toothpaste
So Here I Am, My Affections Torn Between A Postal Service That Never Feeds Me But Can Tackle A Challenge And One That Gives Me Free Tape And Prompt Service But Won't Help Me Out When I Can't Remember A Street Name. The Lesson To Draw From This, Of Course, Is That When You Move From One Country To Another You Have To Accept That There Are Some Things That Are Better And Some Things Worse, And There Is Nothing You Can Do About It. That May Not Be The Profoundest Of Insights To Take Away From A Morning's Outing, But I Did Get A Free Doughnut As Well, So On Balance I Guess I'm Happy.
Country
Morning
Moving
The Remarkable Position In Which We Find Ourselves Is That We Don't Actually Know What We Actually Know.
Remarkable
Position
Knows
Boston's Freeway System Is Insane. It Was Clearly Designed By A Person Who Had Spent His Childhood Crashing Toy Trains.
Boston
Childhood
Insane
Taxonomy Is Described Sometimes As A Science And Sometimes As An Art, But Really It’s A Battleground.
Art
Taxonomy
Sometimes
Clearly, Some Time Ago Makers And Consumers Of American Junk Food Passed Jointly Through Some Kind Of Sensibility Barrier In The Endless Quest For New Taste Sensations. Now They Are A Little Like Those Desperate Junkies Who Have Tried Every Known Drug And Are Finally Reduced To Mainlining Toilet Bowl Cleanser In An Effort To Get Still Higher.
Food
Effort
Drug
What This Means In Practice Is That If You Are Not A Born Worrier You Have Nothing To Worry About (though Of Course You Wouldn't Be Worrying Anyway), Whereas If You Are A Worrier By Nature There Is Absolutely Nothing You Can Do About It, So You May As Well Stop Worrying, Except Of Course You Can't.
Mean
Practice
Worry
If You Believe In God, It's Much More Fantastic To Believe That He Created This Universe Billions Of Years Ago And Set In Motion This Long Train Of Activities That Eventually Resulted In Us. I Think That's So Much More Satisfying, More Thrilling, Than The Idea That It Was All Done In Seven Days.
Believe
Thinking
Years
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.
Gratitude
Appreciation
Mountain
Open Your Refrigerator Door, And You Summon Forth More Light Than The Total Amount Enjoyed By Most Households In The 18th Century. The World At Night, For Much Of History, Was A Very Dark Place, Indeed.
Dark
Night
Light
Even Though Sugar Was Very Expensive, People Consumed It Till Their Teeth Turned Black, And If Their Teeth Didn't Turn Black Naturally, They Blackened Them Artificially To Show How Wealthy And Marvelously Self-indulgent They Were.
Self
People
Black
And Before Long There Will Be No More Milk In Bottles Delivered To The Doorstep Or Sleepy Rural Pubs, And The Countryside Will Be Mostly Shopping Centers And Theme Parks. Forgive Me. I Don't Mean To Get Upset. But You Are Taking My World Away From Me, Piece By Little Piece, And Sometimes It Just Pisses Me Off. Sorry.
Sorry
Mean
Shopping
A Significant Fraction Of Thru-hikers Reach Katahdin, Then Turn Around And Start Back To Georgia. They Just Can't Stop Walking, Which Kind Of Makes You Wonder.
Georgia
Kind
Wonder
Most Big Companies Don't Like You Very Much, Except Hotels, Airlines And Microsoft, Which Don't Like You At All.
America
Microsoft
World
My Favourite Fellow Of The Royal Society Is The Reverend Thomas Bayes, An Obscure 18th-century Kent Clergyman And A Brilliant Mathematician Who Devised A Complex Equation Known As The Bayes Theorem, Which Can Be Used To Work Out Probability Distributions. It Had No Practical Application In His Lifetime, But Today, Thanks To Computers, Is Routinely Used In The Modelling Of Climate Change, Astrophysics And Stock-market Analysis.
Science
Work Out
Royal
I Could Spend My Life Arriving Each Evening In A New City.
Travel
Cities
Arriving
I Understand Cricket - What's Going On, The Scoring - But I Can't Understand Why.
Cricket
I Can
When You Consider It From A Human Perspective, And Clearly It Would Be Difficult For Us To Do Otherwise, Life Is An Odd Thing. It Couldn't Wait To Get Going, But Then, Having Gotten Going, It Seemed In Very Little Hurry To Move On.
Moving
Perspective
Waiting
Every Living Thing Is An Elaboration Of A Single Original Plan. As Humans We Are Mere Increments - Each Of Us A Musty Archive Of Adjustments, Adaptations, Modifications And Providential Tinkerings Stretching Back To 3,8 Billion Years. Remarkably We Are Even Quite Closely Related To Fruit And Vegetables. About Half The Chemical Functions That Take Place In A Banana Are Fundamentally The Same As The Chemical Functions That Place In You. It Cannot Be Said Too Often: All Life Is One. That Is, And I Suspect Will Ever Prove To Be, The Most Profound True Statement There Is.
Years
Vegetables
Profound
The Number Of People On Whose Cooperative Efforts Your Eventual Existence Depends Has Risen To Approximately 1,000,000,000,000,000,000, Which Is Several Thousand Times The Total Number Of People Who Have Ever Lived.
Numbers
People
Effort
Out Of The Thirty Thousand Types Of Edible Plants Thought To Exist On Earth, Just Eleven—corn, Rice, Wheat, Potatoes, Cassava, Sorghum, Millet, Beans, Barley, Rye, And Oats—account For 93 Percent Of All That Humans Eat, And Every One Of Them Was First Cultivated By Our Neolithic Ancestors.
Oats
Wheat
Potatoes
Protons Give An Atom Its Identity, Electrons Its Personality.
Giving
Personality
Identity
As The Saying Goes, It Takes All Kinds To Make The World Go Around, Though Perhaps Some Shouldn't Go Quite So Far Around It As Others.
Life
World
Kind
Houses Aren't Refuges From History. They Are Where History Ends Up.
House
Ends
Refuge
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.
Love You
Tired
Perfect
I'm Not Funny In Person. I Mean I'm Really Not. I'm One Of Those People Who Always Screw Up Anecdotes.
Mean
People
Anecdotes
Distance Changes Utterly When You Take The World On Foot. A Mile Becomes A Long Way, Two Miles Literally Considerable, Ten Miles Whopping, Fifty Miles At The Very Limits Of Conception. The World, You Realize, Is Enormous In A Way That Only You And A Small Community Of Fellow Hikers Know. Planetary Scale Is Your Little Secret.
Distance
Two
Feet
No One Knows, Incidentally, Why Australia's Spiders Are So Extravagantly Toxic; Capturing Small Insects And Injecting Them With Enough Poison To Drop A Horse Would Appear To Be The Most Literal Case Of Overkill. Still, It Does Mean That Everyone Gives Them Lots Of Space.
Horse
Mean
Australia
You Can Always Tell A Midwestern Couple In Europe Because They Will Be Standing On A Traffic Island In The Middle Of A Busy Intersection Looking At A Windblown Map And Arguing Over Which Way Is West. European Cities, With Their Wandering Streets And Undisciplined Alleys, Drive Midwesterners Practically Insane.
Couple
Cities
Islands
Everything That Has Ever Lived, Plant Or Animal, Dates Its Beginning From The Same Primordial Twitch. At Some Point In An Unimaginably Distant Past, Some Little Bag Of Chemicals Fidgeted To Life. It Absorbed Some Nutrients, Gently Pulsed, Had A Brief Existence. This Much May Have Happened Many Times Before. But This Ancestral Packet Did Something Additional And Extraordinary. It Cleaved Itself And Produced An Heir. A Tiny Bundle Of Genetic Material Passed From One Living Entity To Another, And Has Never Stopped Moving Since. It Was The Moment Of Creation For Us All.
Moving
Animal
Past
There Is No Such Thing, Incidentally, As One Kudo.
I Had Always Thought That Once You Grew Up You Could Do Anything You Wanted - Stay Up All Night Or Eat Ice-cream Straight Out Of The Container.
Night
Ice Cream
Childhood
I Often Feel I'm A Disappointment To People Because They Expect Me To Be The Guy In The Books. When I Sit Next To Someone At A Dinner Party I Can See They Expect Me To Be Quick And Witty, And I'm Not At All.
Witty
Disappointment
Party
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.
Country
America
Alive
A Cough So Robust That I Tapped Into Two New Seams Of Phlegm.
Health
Two
Robust
Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

Quotes, or quotations, are powerful tools in communication, encapsulating ideas, emotions, and wisdom in concise expressions. They serve various purposes across different contexts, from academic writing to everyday conversation.

1. Defining Quotes

A quote is a repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts. It can be a direct replication of words spoken or written by another individual, often used to support arguments, provide evidence, or convey profound insights.


2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

Incorporating quotes from authoritative sources can bolster the credibility of your work. By referencing experts or primary sources, you demonstrate thorough research and a solid foundation for your arguments.


2.2. Providing Evidence

Quotes serve as concrete evidence to support claims. In academic and professional writing, they validate points made, offering readers a basis to trust the information presented.


2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

Quotes can encapsulate emotions and perspectives succinctly. They allow writers to express complex feelings or viewpoints through the words of others, often more eloquently than paraphrasing.


3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

Direct quotes involve copying the exact words from a source, enclosed in quotation marks. They are used when the original wording is significant or particularly well-expressed.


3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

Indirect quotes restate the original message in your own words. While not enclosed in quotation marks, they still require proper attribution to the original source.


3.3. Block Quotes

Block quotes are lengthy direct quotations, formatted as a separate block of text. They are typically used for quotes exceeding a certain length, varying by citation style. For instance, in APA style, quotes longer than 40 words are formatted as block quotes.



4. Proper Usage of Quotes


4.1. Contextual Relevance

Ensure that the quote you choose is relevant to the topic and adds value to your content. Avoid inserting quotes solely for decorative purposes.


4.2. Integration into Your Writing

Seamlessly integrate quotes into your writing. Introduce them appropriately and follow up with analysis or commentary to connect them to your main points.


4.3. Attribution and Citation

Always attribute quotes to their original authors and provide proper citations according to the required style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).


5. Common Mistakes to Avoid


5.1. Overusing Quotes

Relying too heavily on quotes can overshadow your voice. Use them sparingly to support your arguments, not replace them.


5.2. Lack of Analysis

Presenting a quote without analysis or explanation can leave readers questioning its relevance. Always follow up with your interpretation or discussion.


5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

Ensure that quotes are accurate and not taken out of context, as this can mislead readers and undermine your credibility.



6. Quotes in Different Contexts


6.1. Academic Writing

In academic writing, quotes are used to support arguments, provide evidence, and engage with existing literature. Proper citation is crucial to avoid plagiarism.


6.2. Journalism

Journalists use quotes to provide firsthand accounts, add authenticity, and present multiple perspectives within a story.


6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

In literature, quotes can be used to convey character voices, themes, and stylistic elements. They enrich narratives and provide depth to storytelling.



7. Punctuation and Formatting


Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:


Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.


Punctuation Placement: In American English, periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks, while colons and semicolons are placed outside.


Block Quotes: For longer quotes, format them as block quotes without quotation marks, and indent the entire block.



8. Ethical Considerations


Ethical use of quotes involves accurate representation, proper attribution, and respect for intellectual property. Misuse can lead to plagiarism, which carries serious academic and professional consequences.

9. Tools for Managing Quotes


Utilize tools like citation generators and plagiarism checkers to manage quotes effectively. These tools help ensure proper formatting and originality in your writing.



Conclusion


Quotes are invaluable in enriching content, providing evidence, and conveying complex ideas succinctly. When used appropriately, they enhance the quality and credibility of your writing. Always ensure relevance, proper integration, and ethical usage to maximize their impact.


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