Bill Bryson

The English language is like London: proudly barbaric yet deeply civilized, too, common yet royal, vulgar yet processional, sacred yet profane.

To an American, 'forty' is a number. To an Englishman, it is a noun.

There are some 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.

Of all the hardships a person had to face, none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.

I am always at a loss when I meet hostility, because I can love and I can do practically nothing else.

Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada, while Canadians are malevolently well informed about the United States.

Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things - air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.

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.

I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.

Strip away the phony tinsel of Hollywood and you'll find the real tinsel underneath.

I am not a cynic. I am a disappointed idealist.

You can't understand what it's like to be an American unless you've been poor and black.