{"author":"Bill Bryson","author_id":"Bill+Bryson","total_quotes":138,"quotes":[{"text":"You don't need a science degree to understand about science. You just need to think about it.","author":"Bill Bryson","tags":["understand","think","you "],"id":4290,"author_id":"Bill+Bryson"},{"text":"On a cooler sun on a primordial earth: 'I later learned that biologists, when they are feeling jocose, refer to this as the 'Chinese Resaturant Problem'--because we has a dim sun.","author":"Bill Bryson","tags":["humorous","science"],"id":4383,"author_id":"Bill+Bryson"},{"text":"It is always quietly thrilling to find yourself looking at a world you know well but have never seen from such an angle before.","author":"Bill Bryson","tags":["perspective","renewal"],"id":5328,"author_id":"Bill+Bryson"},{"text":"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.","author":"Bill Bryson","tags":["creature-comforts","home","tourism"],"id":5810,"author_id":"Bill+Bryson"},{"text":"Shakespeare 'never owned a book,' a writer for the New York Times gravely informed readers in one doubting article in 2002. The statement cannot actually be refuted, for we know nothing about his incidental possessions. But the writer might just as well have suggested that Shakespeare never owned a pair of shoes or pants. For all the evidence tells us, he spent his life naked from the waist down, as well as bookless, but it is probably that what is lacking is the evidence, not the apparel or the books.","author":"Bill Bryson","tags":["evidence","history","shakespeare"],"id":6833,"author_id":"Bill+Bryson"},{"text":"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.","author":"Bill Bryson","tags":["atoms","science","self-awareness"],"id":12467,"author_id":"Bill+Bryson"},{"text":"What on earth would I do if four bears came into my camp? Why, I would die of course. Literally shit myself lifeless.","author":"Bill Bryson","tags":["appalachia","attack","bear","camp","camping","funny","hiking","shit","trail","true"],"id":14034,"author_id":"Bill+Bryson"},{"text":"She was torn between her customer service training and her youthful certitude.","author":"Bill Bryson","tags":["culture","education","graciousness","humility","maturation"],"id":14629,"author_id":"Bill+Bryson"},{"text":"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.","author":"Bill Bryson","tags":["book","successful","me "],"id":17000,"author_id":"Bill+Bryson"},{"text":"By the 1920s if you wanted to work behind a lunch counter you needed to know that 'Noah's boy' was a slice of ham (since Ham was one of Noah’s sons) and that 'burn one' or 'grease spot' designated a hamburger. 'He'll take a chance' or 'clean the kitchen' meant an order of hash, 'Adam and Eve on a raft' was two poached eggs on toast, 'cats' eyes' was tapioca pudding, 'bird seed' was cereal, 'whistleberries' were baked beans, and 'dough well done with cow to cover' was the somewhat labored way of calling for an order of toast and butter. Food that had been waiting too long was said to be 'growing a beard'. Many of these shorthand terms have since entered the mainstream, notably BLT for a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, 'over easy' and 'sunny side up' in respect of eggs, and 'hold' as in 'hold the mayo'.","author":"Bill Bryson","tags":["food","humor","language"],"id":17654,"author_id":"Bill+Bryson"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":138,"pages":14,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}