Bill Bryson Quotes

I loved living in Hollywood - and the weather there was just fantastic - but there is something about rural England, and especially Suffolk and Norfolk, that pulls at my heartstrings.

While Pickstown may not be what it once was, it still is framed by the natural beauty of the ancient river, the sweep of the Great Plains, and the long, unbroken shoreline of the lake behind the dam. It gave me a 19th-century childhood in a modern mid-20th-century town, and for that I will always be grateful.

Ultima came to stay with us the summer I was almost seven. When she came the beauty of the llano unfolded before my eyes, and the gurgling waters of the river sang to the hum of the turning earth. The magical time of childhood stood still, and the pulse of the living earth pressed its mystery into my living blood.

It is the secret life that sustains me now, and as I reach the top of that bridge I say it in a whisper, I say it as a prayer, as regret, and as praise. I can't tell you why I do it or what it means, but each night when I drive toward my southern home and my southern life, I whisper these words: 'Lowenstein, Lowenstein.

When a band means a lot to you, you build the fantasy more than the reality. Always.

I don't get all this Speedo stuff actually, I mean, whatever happened to the feather boa?

I never get tired of signing autographs 'cause I used to do it so much in class dreaming about the day that it might mean something to somebody.

A remembrance can mean nothing to the one remembered; it can only remind the ones left behind how little they did while you were still alive.

I used to listen to it all the time when I was little and thinking about grown-up things. I would go to my bedroom window and stare at my reflection in the glass and the trees behind it and just listen to the song for hours. I decided then that when I met someone I thought was as beautiful as the song, I should give it to that person. And I didn’t mean beautiful on the outside. I meant beautiful in all ways.

Just because a marriage ended didn't mean that it hadn't been happy at times.

Melancholy is kind of sweet sometimes, I think. It's not a negative thing. It's not a mean thing. It's just something that happens in life, like autumn.

I'm basically in every band I ever was in, and the songs, I still mean them all. I don't take anything back, so I do look after them to some degree. But my main focus is on what I'm doing now.

Daddy, when he drank, just became sweeter. There wasn't a mean thought in his body. I've always said he was like a drunk Jimmy Stewart.

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depths of some devine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy autumn fields, And thinking of the days that are no more.

Dor shook his head. “The phrase. What does it mean?” Sarah wondered if he was kidding. “Time flies? You know, like, time goes really fast and suddenly you’re saying goodbye and it’s like no time passed at all?” His eyes drifted. He liked it. “Time flies.” “With you,” she added.

Things change, people change, but that doesn't mean you should forget the past.

I don't hate too many guys. What I may do, I may hate them for a little while, like this guy Stradlater I knew at Pencey, and this other boy, Robert Ackley. I hate them once in a while—I admit it—but it doesn't last too long, is what I mean. After a while, if I didn't see them, if they didn't come in the room, or if I didn't see them in the dining room for a couple of meals, I sort of missed them. I mean I sort of missed them.

Surely heaven must have something of the color and shape of whatever village or hill or cottage of which the believer says, This is my own.

It's important for me to go back into the ghetto, where I'm from. I still get my oxygen from there. I don't live in the ghetto but every time I go back, I'm seeing the same things that I lived. That's one of the things I mean when I say, "My feet back onto the ground."

In the 80's we had high, high, waisted pants, that if they came up any higher they'd have to go up another size, if you know what I mean.

They're always looking forward to going places they're just coming back from, or regretting doing things they haven't yet done. They say hello when they mean goodbye.

I feel Polish. More specifically, I feel like I'm from the tiny village in the Northeast of Poland where I have a house and where I love to spend time. But I don't work there. I cut wood.

I get very nostalgic for times and places and experiences, but I have a wonderful group of core friends and family who I love and adore, so I don't mourn the loss of any particular friendship. I think they're all part of a path, and the ones that really mean something are still important in my life.

The arresting officer, who I had literally known, all my life. You know what I mean? This guy lived four doors down the street me, in a town of less than four hundred people. *We've met.* Now, he takes me to jail, and he asks me if I have any aliases. And I was just being a smartass, and I said, "Yeah. They call me, "Tater Salad!" Seventeen years later, I'm handcuffed on a bench in New York with blood coming out of my nose, and this cop goes, "Are you Ron 'Tater Salad' White?"