Quotes from I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

“Of all the things I am not very good at, living in the real world is perhaps the most outstanding.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

“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.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

“Of all the things I am not very good at, living in the real world is perhaps the most outstanding. I am constantly filled with wonder at the number of things that other people do without any evident difficulty that are pretty much beyond me.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

“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.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

“Christmas tree stands are the work of the devil and they want you dead.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

“... 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.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

“Coming back to your native land after an absence of many years is a surprisingly unsettling business, a little like waking up from a long coma.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

“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.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

“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?”
― Bill Bryson, quote from I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

“It wasn't until we dropped him at his university dormitory and left him there looking touchingly lost and bewildered amid an assortment of cardboard boxes and suitcases in a spartan room not unlike a prison cell that it really hit home that he was vanishing out of our lives and into his own.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

“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.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

“In office buildings and retail premises in which entry is through double doors and one of those doors is locked for no reason, the door must bear a large sign saying: “This Door Is Locked for No Reason.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

“Confused and unable to help, my hair went into panic mode.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

“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 most astounding stroke of luck and 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.

For endless eons there was no you. Before you know it, you will cease to be again. And in between you have this wonderful opportunity to see and feel and think and do. Whatever else you do with your life, nothing will remotely compare with the incredible accomplishment of having managed to get yourself born. Congratulations. Well done. You really are special.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

“I love everything about motels. I can't help myself. I still get excited every time I slip a key into a motel room door and fling it open.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

“If you initialed one dollar per second, you would make $1,000 every seventeen minutes. After 12 days of nonstop effort you would acquire your first $1 million. Thus, it would take you 120 days to accumulate $10 million and 1,200 days— something over three years—to reach $100 million. After 31.7 years you would become a billionaire, and after almost a thousand years you would be as wealthy as Bill Gates. But not until after 31,709.8 years would you count your trillionth dollar (and even then you would be less than one-fourth of the way through the pile of money representing America’s national debt). That is what $1 trillion is.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

“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.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

“Nobody deserves to go to the World Series more than the Chicago Cubs. But they can't go because that would spoil their custom of never going. It is an irreconcilable paradox.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

“In the United States, frozen cheese pizza is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. Frozen pepperoni pizza, on the other hand, is regulated by the Department of Agriculture.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

“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.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

“The hard and unexpected part is the realization not just that my son is not here but that the boy he was is gone forever. I would give anything to have them both back. But of course that cannot be. Life moves on. Kids grow up and move away, and if you don't know this already, believe me, it happens faster than you can imagine.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

“There are some things in life that just have to be faced up to, whether you want to or not.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

“Последните думи на генерал Седжуик били: " Казвам ти, човече, не биха могли да уцелят и бизон от такова разс....”
― Bill Bryson, quote from I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

“In Anglo-Saxon times, according to Crippen, it was customary for someone offering a drink to say, “Wassail!” and for the recipient to respond “Drinkhail!” and for the participants to repeat the exercise until comfortably horizontal.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

“Don't ever do anything on principle alone. If you haven't got a better reason for doing something other than the principle of the thing, then don't do it.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

“Don't make the extremely foolish mistake of thinking that winning is everything. If there is one person that I would really like to smack, it is the person who said, "Winning is not the main thing. It's the only thing." That's awful. Taking part is the main thing. Doing your best is the main thing. There is no shame in not winning. The shame is in not trying to win, which is of course another matter altogether. Above all, be gracious in defeat. Believe me, you'll get plenty of chances to put this into practice, so you might as well
start working on it now.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

“You have your whole life ahead of you. But here's the thing to remember. You will always have your whole life ahead of you. That never stops and you shouldn't forget it.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

“People are so addicted to convenience that they have become trapped in a vicious circle: The more labor-saving appliances they acquire, the harder they need to work; the harder they
work, the more labor-saving appliances they feel they need to acquire.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

“As the economist Herman Daly once put it: “The current national accounting system treats the earth as a business in liquidation.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

“Most people think they want Main Streets but won't make the small sacrifices in terms of time, cost, and footpower necessary to sustain them. The sad fact is that we have created a culture in which most people will happily-indeed, unthinkingly-drive an extra couple of miles to walk thirty less feet.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

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“All about them the golden girls, shopping for dainties in Lairville. Even in the midst of the wild-maned winter's chill, skipping about in sneakers and sweatsocks, cream-colored raincoats. A generation in the mold, the Great White Pattern Maker lying in his prosperous bed, grinning while the liquid cools. But he does not know my bellows. Someone there is who will huff and will puff. The sophmores in their new junior blazers, like Saturday's magazines out on Thursday. Freshly covered textbooks from the campus store, slide rules dangling in leather, sheathed broadswords, chinos scrubbed to the virgin fiber, starch pressed into straight-razor creases, Oxford shirts buttoned down under crewneck sweaters, blue eyes bobbing everywhere, stunned by the android synthesis of one-a-day vitamins, Tropicana orange juice, fresh country eggs, Kraft homogenized cheese, tetra-packs of fortified milk, Cheerios with sun-ripened bananas, corn-flake-breaded chicken, hot fudge sundaes, Dairy Queen root beer floats, cheeseburgers, hybrid creamed corn, riboflavin extract, brewer's yeast, crunchy peanut butter, tuna fish casseroles, pancakes and imitation maple syrup, chuck steaks, occasional Maine lobster, Social Tea biscuits, defatted wheat germ, Kellogg's Concentrate, chopped string beans, Wonderbread, Birds Eye frozen peas, shredded spinach, French-fried onion rings, escarole salads, lentil stews, sundry fowl innards, Pecan Sandies, Almond Joys, aureomycin, penicillin, antitetanus toxoid, smallpox vaccine, Alka-Seltzer, Empirin, Vicks VapoRub, Arrid with chlorophyll, Super Anahist nose spray, Dristan decongestant, billions of cubic feet of wholesome, reconditioned breathing air, and the more wholesome breeds of fraternal exercise available to Western man. Ah, the regimented good will and force-fed confidence of those who are not meek but will inherit the earth all the same.”
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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

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