The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America (Bryson Book 12)

by Bill Bryson

there are three 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.

I read once that it takes 75,000 trees to produce one issue of the Sunday New York Times – and it’s well worth every trembling leaf. So what if our grandchildren have no oxygen to breathe? Fuck ’em.

It was the worst food I had ever had – and remember, I’ve lived in Britain.

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?)

I only ever knew one journalist with a truly tidy desk, and he was eventually arrested for molesting small boys. Make of that what you will; but just bear it in mind the next time somebody with a tidy desk invites you camping.