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Traveling Is More Fun - Hell, Life Is More Fun - If You Can Treat It As A Series Of Impulses.
-Bill Bryson
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Traveling Is More Fun

Bill Bryson
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Traveling Is More Fun - Hell, Life Is More Fun - If You Can Treat It As A Series Of Impulses.

Understanding the Quote: "traveling is more fun - hell, life is more fun - if..."

This quote by Bill Bryson reflects deeply on the theme of fun. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Fun, Life Is, Hell, 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 fun and life is. 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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Fun
Life Is
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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.
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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.
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I Do Find London Exciting. Much As I Hate To Agree With That Tedious Old Git Samuel Johnson, And Despite The Pompous Imbecility Of His Famous Remark About When A Man Is Tired Of London He Is Tired Of Life...i Can't Dispute It.
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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.
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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.
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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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The Universe Is Not Only Queerer Than We Suppose; It Is Queerer Than We Can Suppose
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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.
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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.
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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.
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[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.
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He Had The Sort Of Face That Makes You Realize God Does Have A Sense Of Humor.
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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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The Average Southerner Has The Speech Patterns Of Someone Slipping In And Out Of Consciousness. I Can Change My Shoes And Socks Faster Than Most People In Mississippi Can Speak A Sentence.
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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.
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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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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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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.
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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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Making English Grammar Conform To Latin Rules Is Like Asking People To Play Baseball Using The Rules Of Football.
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Of All The Things I Am Not Very Good At, Living In The Real World Is Perhaps The Most Outstanding.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Australia
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People
Would Be
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.
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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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America
Alive
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Science
Work Out
Royal
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
Four Times I Was Honked At For Having The Temerity To Proceed Through Town Without The Benefit Of Metal.
Journey
Hiking
Benefits
I'm Definitely An American, Because I Grew Up Here. But I've Lived Very Happily In Britain.
Grew Up
Britain
Grew
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Country
Sorry
In Terms Of Adaptability, Humans Are Pretty Amazingly Useless.
Useless
Adaptability
Term
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.
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Home
Average
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Population
World
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Mean
Australia
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Use
World
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Animal
Past
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Houses Aren't Refuges From History. They Are Where History Ends Up.
House
Ends
Refuge
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
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
The English Invented Cricket To Make Other Human Endeavors Look Interesting.
Interesting
Looks
Cricket
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
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
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
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
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
For Anyone Of A Rational Disposition, Fashion Is Often Nearly Impossible To Fathom. Throughout Many Periods Of History – Perhaps Most – It Can Seem As If The Whole Impulse Of Fashion Has Been To Look Maximally Ridiculous. If One Could Be Maximally Uncomfortable As Well, The Triumph Was All The Greater.
Fashion
Triumph
Looks
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
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
For Most Of Us The Rules Of English Grammar Are At Best A Dimly Remembered Thing. But Even For Those Who Make The Rules, Grammatical Correctitude Sometimes Proves Easier To Urge Than To Achieve. Among The Errors Cited In This Book Are A Number Committed By Some Of The Leading Authorities Of This Century. If Men Such As Fowler And Bernstein And Quirk And Howard Cannot Always Get Their English Right, Is It Reasonable To Expect The Rest Of Us To?
Book
Writing
Men
Language Is More Fashion Than Science, And Matters Of Usage, Spelling And Pronunciation Tend To Wander Around Like Hemlines.
Fashion
Writing
Matter
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 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
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
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
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
More Than 300 Million People In The World Speak English And The Rest, It Sometimes Seems, Try To.
Speak English
People
Trying
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
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
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
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
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
America Is A Very Seductive Place In Terms Of Lifestyle And Comfort, But It Wasn't For Me.
America
Seductive
Comfort
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
You Don't Need A Science Degree To Understand About Science. You Just Need To Think About It.
Science
Thinking
Understanding
"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
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 Don't Know Whether I'm Misanthropic. It Seems To Me I'm Constantly Disappointed. I'm Very Easily Disappointed.
Misanthropic
Disappointed
Knows
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
I Come From Des Moines. Someone Had To.
Des Moines
Still, I Never Really Mind Bad Service In A Restaurant. It Makes Me Feel Better About Not Leaving A Tip.
Feel Better
Leaving
Mind
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
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
Boston's Freeway System Is Insane. It Was Clearly Designed By A Person Who Had Spent His Childhood Crashing Toy Trains.
Boston
Childhood
Insane
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.
Average
Hydrogen Bomb
Energy
There Is No Such Thing, Incidentally, As One Kudo.
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
My First Rule Of Consumerism Is Never To Buy Anything You Can't Make Your Children Carry.
Children
Firsts
Consumerism
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
A Cough So Robust That I Tapped Into Two New Seams Of Phlegm.
Health
Two
Robust
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
Government
Years
America
I Understand Cricket - What's Going On, The Scoring - But I Can't Understand Why.
Cricket
I Can
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
Pessimism
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
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
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
Traveling Is More Fun - Hell, Life Is More Fun - If You Can Treat It As A Series Of Impulses.
Fun
Life Is
Hell
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
There Is More Difference Between A Zebra And A Horse, Or Between A Dolphin And A Porpoise, Than There Is Between You And The Furry Creatures Your Distant Ancestors Left Behind When They Set Out To Take Over The World.
Horse
Zebras
Differences
Not Writing The Same Kind Of Book Over And Over Again Is To Me The Real Pleasure Of What I Do.
Real
Book
Writing
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
I See Litter As Part Of A Long Continuum Of Anti-social Behaviour.
Long
Behaviour
Social
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 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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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