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It's An Unnerving Thought That We May Be The Living Universe's Supreme Achievement And Its Worst Nightmare Simultaneously.
-Bill Bryson
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It's An Unnerving Thought

Bill Bryson
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It's An Unnerving Thought That We May Be The Living Universe's Supreme Achievement And Its Worst Nightmare Simultaneously.

Understanding the Quote: "it's an unnerving thought that we may be the living universe's supreme..."

This quote by Bill Bryson reflects deeply on the theme of worst nightmares. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Worst Nightmares, Achievement, May, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Bill Bryson interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson is celebrated for insightful thoughts on worst nightmares and achievement. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Worst Nightmares
Achievement
May
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Geologists Are Never At A Loss For Paperweights.
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The Human Diet Consists Of Just Nine Plants: Corn, Rice, Wheat, Potatoes, Cassava, Sorghum, Millet, Beans, Barley, Rye And Oats.
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Nearly A Quarter Of American Men Were In The Armed Forces. The Rest Were In School, In Prison, Or Were George W. Bush.
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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.
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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.
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Waiting
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
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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.
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... 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.
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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.
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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.
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The Remarkable Position In Which We Find Ourselves Is That We Don't Actually Know What We Actually Know.
Remarkable
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The Great Failure In Education, Much Of The Time, Is The Lack Of Excitement And Stimulus
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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.
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The English Invented Cricket To Make Other Human Endeavors Look Interesting.
Interesting
Looks
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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
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I Hadn't Realized Quite How Extraordinary Charles Lindbergh's Achievement Was In Flying The Atlantic Alone. He Had Never Flown Over Open Water Before, But He Flew Straight To Dingle Bay In Ireland And Then On To Paris, Exactly As Planned.
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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 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
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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.
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Energy Is Liberated Matter, Matter Is Energy Waiting To Happen.
Waiting
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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.
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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.
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People
Black
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.
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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.
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Language Is More Fashion Than Science, And Matters Of Usage, Spelling And Pronunciation Tend To Wander Around Like Hemlines.
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It's Hard Not To Be Kind Of Pessimistic About Human Beings Generally, Because We Do Tend To Mess Things Up. If You Just Look At The History Of Extinctions, We've Killed Off An Awful Lot Of Animals - And I Don't Think We're Doing A Very Good Job Of Looking After The Planet.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I Sat On A Toilet Watching The Water Run Thinking What An Odd Thing Tourism Is. You Fly Off To A Strange Land, Eagerly Abandoning All The Comforts Of Home And Then Expend Vast Quantities Of Time And Money In A Largely Futile Effort To Recapture The Comforts You Wouldn’t Have Lost If You Hadn’t Left Home In The First Place.
Running
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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.
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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.
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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.
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A Cough So Robust That I Tapped Into Two New Seams Of Phlegm.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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When You Tell An Iowan A Joke, You Can See A Kind Of Race Going On Between His Brain And His Expression.
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I Became Quietly Seized With That Nostalgia That Overcomes You When You Have Reached The Middle Of Your Life And Your Father Has Recently Died And It Dawns On You That When He Went He Took Some Of You With Him.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Judging
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Physics Is Really Nothing More Than A Search For Ultimate Simplicity, But So Far All We Have Is A Kind Of Elegant Messiness.
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Kind
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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
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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.
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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.
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Sarcastic
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The Best That Can Be Said For Norwegian Television Is That It Gives You The Sensation Of A Coma Without The Worry And Inconvenience.
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I Tell The Kids That, Even In A Childhood Marked By Despair And Deprivation, I Knew That No Matter What Happened, I Still Had My Family, Or At Least The Remnants Of A Family Ripped Apart By Divorce And Then Glued Back Together In Various Odd Arrangements Through A Series Of Ill- Advised Remarriages. It Was Good To Know I Had A Solid Foundation.
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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--
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Utterance
Earth
There'd Never Been A More Advantageous Time To Be A Criminal In America Than During The 13 Years Of Prohibition. At A Stroke, The American Government Closed Down The Fifth Largest Industry In The United States - Alcohol Production - And Just Handed It To Criminals - A Pretty Remarkable Thing To Do.
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I Still Enjoy Traveling A Lot. I Mean, It Amazes Me That I Still Get Excited In Hotel Rooms Just To See What Kind Of Shampoo They've Left Me.
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Rooms
Kind
Finally, This Being America, There Is The Constant Possibility Of Murder.
America
Murder
Possibility
Not Writing The Same Kind Of Book Over And Over Again Is To Me The Real Pleasure Of What I Do.
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Book
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Everything Seems To Be Designed For The Benefit Of The Automobile And Not The Benefit Of The Human Being.
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Malls
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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.
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Mean
Shopping
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.
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I Don't Know Whether I'm Misanthropic. It Seems To Me I'm Constantly Disappointed. I'm Very Easily Disappointed. Disappointed In The Things That People Do; Disappointed In The Things That People Construct. I Want Things To Be Better All The Time.
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Want
Misanthropic
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.
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Black
Would Be
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
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Mean
Practice
Worry
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
Still, I Never Really Mind Bad Service In A Restaurant. It Makes Me Feel Better About Not Leaving A Tip.
Feel Better
Leaving
Mind
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
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
It's An Unnerving Thought That We May Be The Living Universe's Supreme Achievement And Its Worst Nightmare Simultaneously.
Worst Nightmares
Achievement
May
Isn´t It Strange How Wealth Is Always Wasted On The Rich?
Strange
Wealth
Rich
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
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.'
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Starting
Minutes
There Is Always A Little More Toothpaste In The Tube. Think About It.
Thinking
Littles
Toothpaste
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 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.
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Sleep
Europe
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.
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Night
Light
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
I Refer Of Course To The Soaring Wonder Of The Age Known As The Eiffel Tower. Never In History Has A Structure Been More Technologically Advanced, Materially Obsolescent, And Gloriously Pointless All At The Same Time.
Age
Towers
Wonder
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
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
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
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
If You Were Designing An Organism To Look After Life In Our Lonely Cosmos, To Monitor Where It Is Going And Keep A Record Of Where It Has Been, You Wouldn't Choose Human Beings For The Job. But Here's An Extrememly Salient Point: We Have Been Chosen, By Fate Or Providence Or Whatever You Wish To Call It. As Far As We Can Tell, We Are The Best There Is. We May Be All There Is. It's An Unnerving Thought That We May Be The Living Universe's Supreme Achievement And Its Worst Nightmare Simultaneously.
Lonely
Jobs
Fate
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
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.
Book
Mean
Appreciate
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
Protons Give An Atom Its Identity, Electrons Its Personality.
Giving
Personality
Identity
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
Thinking
Knitting Needles
You May Not Feel Outstandingly Robust, But If You Are An Average-sized Adult You Will Contain Within Your Modest Frame No Less Than 7 X 10^18 Joules Of Potential Energy—enough To Explode With The Force Of Thirty Very Large Hydrogen Bombs, Assuming You Knew How To Liberate It And Really Wished To Make A Point.
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Hydrogen Bomb
Energy
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
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
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
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
My Mother Only Ever Said Two Things. She Said,'i Don't Know, Dear.'and She Said,'can I Get You A Sandwich, Honey?
Mother
Two
Sandwiches
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
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
I See Litter As Part Of A Long Continuum Of Anti-social Behaviour.
Long
Behaviour
Social
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
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
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
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
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
Maps
Des Moines Is Like Your Typical American City; It's Just These Concentric Circles Of Malls, Built Outward From The City.
Cities
Circles
Typical
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 May Find That Your Parents Are The Most Delightful People, But You Don't Want To Live With Them.
People
Parent
May
We Forget Just How Painfully Dim The World Was Before Electricity. A Candle, A Good Candle, Provides Barely A Hundredth Of The Illumination Of A Single 100 Watt Light Bulb.
Light
Illumination
World
That's The Trouble With Losing Your Mind; By The Time It's Gone, It's Too Late To Get It Back.
Mind
Too Late
Gone
There Are Only Three Things That Can Kill A Farmer: Lightning, Rolling Over In A Tractor, And Old Age.
Age
Lightning
Rolling Along
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
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.
Travel
Coffee
Beer
It Sometimes Occurs To Me That The British Have More Heritage Than Isgood For Them.
Heritage
Sometimes
British
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
The Universe Is Not Only Queerer Than We Suppose; It Is Queerer Than We Can Suppose
Funny
Knowledge
Science
Of All The Things I Am Not Very Good At, Living In The Real World Is Perhaps The Most Outstanding.
Real
World
Good Advice
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
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
More Than 300 Million People In The World Speak English And The Rest, It Sometimes Seems, Try To.
Speak English
People
Trying
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
There Are Things You Just Can't Do In Life. You Can't Beat The Phone Company, You Can't Make A Waiter See You Until He's Ready To See You, And You Can't Go Home Again.
Home
Phones
House
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
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
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
Think Of A Single Problem Confronting The World Today. Disease, Poverty, Global Warming... If The Problem Is Going To Be Solved, It Is Science That Is Going To Solve It. Scientists Tend To Be Unappreciated In The World At Large, But You Can Hardly Overstate The Importance Of The Work They Do. If Anyone Ever Cures Cancer, It Will Be A Guy With A Science Degree. Or A Woman With A Science Degree.
Cancer
Science
Thinking
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
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
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 You Sit In A Chair, You Are Not Actually Sitting There, But Levitating Above It At A Height Of One Angstrom (a Hundred Millionth Of A Centimetre), Your Electrons And Its Electrons Implacably Opposed To Any Closer Intimacy.
Sitting
Height
Intimacy
A World Without Newspapers Or A World Where The Newspapers Are Purely Electronic And You Read Them On A Screen Is Not A Very Appealing World.
World
Newspapers
Screens
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
It Is Always Quietly Thrilling To Find Yourself Looking At A World You Know Well But Have Never Seen From Such An Angle Before.
Finding Yourself
World
Angle
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
In A Funny Way, Nothing Makes You Feel More Like A Native Of Your Own Country Than To Live Where Nearly Everyone Is Not.
Country
Way
Feels
It Is A Curious Feature Of Our Existance That We Come From A Planet That Is Very Good At Promoting Life But Even Better At Extinguishing It.
Curious
Planets
Very Good
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
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
Houses Aren't Refuges From History. They Are Where History Ends Up.
House
Ends
Refuge
Most Big Companies Don't Like You Very Much, Except Hotels, Airlines And Microsoft, Which Don't Like You At All.
America
Microsoft
World
Most Of What Has Lived On Earth Has Left Behind No Record At All.
Records
Earth
Left Behind
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
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
I Don't Know Whether I'm Misanthropic. It Seems To Me I'm Constantly Disappointed. I'm Very Easily Disappointed.
Misanthropic
Disappointed
Knows
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
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
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
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
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
America Is A Very Seductive Place In Terms Of Lifestyle And Comfort, But It Wasn't For Me.
America
Seductive
Comfort
Romans Park Their Cars The Way I Would Park If I Had Just Spilled A Beaker Of Hydrochloric Acid On My Lap.
Car
Lap
Way
My First Rule Of Consumerism Is Never To Buy Anything You Can't Make Your Children Carry.
Children
Firsts
Consumerism
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
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
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. In Latin, To Take One Example, It Is Not Possible To Split An Infinitive. So In English, The Early Authorities Decided, It Should Not Be Possible To Split An Infinitive Either. But There Is No Reason Why We Shouldn't, Any More Than We Should Forsake Instant Coffee And Air Travel Because They Weren't Available To The Romans.
Latin
Coffee
Writing
Four Times I Was Honked At For Having The Temerity To Proceed Through Town Without The Benefit Of Metal.
Journey
Hiking
Benefits
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
Boston's Freeway System Is Insane. It Was Clearly Designed By A Person Who Had Spent His Childhood Crashing Toy Trains.
Boston
Childhood
Insane
Most Scientists Are Without Exception Adorably Quirky, And One Of The Ways Of Making It More Accessible Was To Try To Get Readers Interested In The Person.
Quirky
Trying
Way
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
You Can Be A Scientist And Believe In God: The Two Can Go Hand In Hand.
Believe
Hands
Two
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
I Love The Feeling Of Being Anonymous In A City I've Never Been Before.
Travel
Cities
Feelings
There Is No Such Thing, Incidentally, As One Kudo.
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
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
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
The Whole Of The Global Economy Is Based On Supplying The Cravings Of Two Per Cent Of The World's Population.
Two
Population
World
[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
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
An Awful Lot Of England Is Slowly Eroding, In Ways That I Find Really Distressing, And An Awful Lot Of It Is The Hedgerows... We're Reaching The Point Where A Lot Of The English Countryside Looks Just Like Iowa - Just Kind Of Open Space.
Iowa
Space
Looks
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
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
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
I Understand Cricket - What's Going On, The Scoring - But I Can't Understand Why.
Cricket
I Can
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
It Was The Kind Of Pure, Undiffused Light That Can Only Come From A Really Hot Blue Sky, The Kind That Makes Even A Concrete Highway Painful To Behold And Turns Every Distant Reflective Surface Into A Little Glint Of Flame. Do You Know How Sometimes On Very Fine Days The Sun Will Shine With A Particular Intensity That Makes The Most Mundane Objects In The Landscape Glow With An Unusual Radiance, So That Buildings And Structures You Normally Pass Without A Glance Suddenly Become Arresting, Even Beautiful? Well, They Seem To Have That Light In Australia Nearly All The Time.
Beautiful
Australia
Light
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
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
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
Uncles
Eye
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
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
Making A Difference
Energy
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
Eating In Sweden Is Really Just A Series Of Heartbreaks.
Sweden
Eating
Series
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.
Nature
Years
Hunters
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
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
The Tearoom Lady Called Me Love. All The Shop Ladies Called Me Love And Most Of The Men Called Me Mate. I Hadn't Been Here Twelve Hours And Already They Loved Me.
Men
Twelve
Hours
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
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
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
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
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
I'm Definitely An American, Because I Grew Up Here. But I've Lived Very Happily In Britain.
Grew Up
Britain
Grew
Human Beings Would Split The Atom And Invent Television, Nylon, And Instant Coffee Before They Could Figure Out The Age Of Their Own Planet.
Coffee
Age
Nylon
Christmas Tree Stands Are The Work Of The Devil And They Want You Dead.
Tree
Devil
Want
I Could Spend My Life Arriving Each Evening In A New City.
Travel
Cities
Arriving
Life Just Wants To Be; But It Doesn't Want To Be Much.
Want
Trending Author
Jim Cooper
Emma Bull
Piers Anthony
Ehud Olmert
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Category
Information