Notes from a Small Island Quotes

“some guy in a Morris Minor going eleven miles per hour through the Lake District and collecting a three-mile following because, apparently, he’s always wanted to lead a parade;”
― Bill Bryson, Notes from a Small Island

“this is a little-known fact but absolute truth—that when they dedicate a new multistory car park, the Lord Mayor and his wife have a ceremonial pee in the stairwell? It’s true.”
― Bill Bryson, Notes from a Small Island

“What fun you can have! And when you get tired of them, tell them to meet you at Brompton Road Station. It closed in 1947, so you’ll never have to see them again.”
― Bill Bryson, Notes from a Small Island

“Much as I admire sand’s miraculous ability to be transformed into useful objects like glass and concrete, I am not a great fan of it in its natural state. To me, it is primarily a hostile barrier that stands between a parking lot and water. It blows in your face, gets in your sandwiches, swallows vital objects like car keys and coins. In hot countries, it burns your feet and makes you go “Ooh! Ah!” and hop to the water in a fashion that people with better bodies find amusing. When you are wet, it adheres to you like stucco, and cannot be shifted with a fireman’s hose. But—and here’s the strange thing—the moment you step on a beach towel, climb into a car, or walk across a recently vacuumed carpet, it all falls off.”
― Bill Bryson, Notes from a Small Island

“I can never understand why Londoners fail to see that they live in the most wonderful city in the world. It is, if you ask me, far more beautiful and interesting than Paris and more lively than anywhere but New York—and even New York can’t touch it in lots of important ways. It has more history, finer parks, a livelier and more varied press, better theaters, more numerous orchestras and museums, leafier squares, safer streets, and more courteous inhabitants than any other large city in the world. And it has more congenial small things—incidental civilities, you might call them—than any other city I know: cheery red mailboxes, drivers who actually stop for you at pedestrian crossings, lovely forgotten churches with wonderful names like St. Andrew by the Wardrobe and St. Giles Cripplegate, sudden pockets of quiet like Lincoln’s Inn and Red Lion Square, interesting statues of obscure Victorians in togas, pubs, black cabs, double-decker buses, helpful policemen, polite notices, people who will stop to help you when you fall down or drop your shopping, benches everywhere. What other great city would trouble to put blue plaques on houses to let you know what famous person once lived there, or warn you to look left or right before stepping off the curb? I’ll tell you. None.”
― Bill Bryson, Notes from a Small Island

“How is it possible, in this wondrous land where the relics of genius and enterprise confront you at every step, where every realm of human possibility has been probed and challenged and meticulously extended, where many of the very greatest accomplishments of industry, commerce, and the arts find their seat—how is it possible in such a place that when at length I returned to my hotel and switched on the television, it was Cagney & Lacey again?”
― Bill Bryson, Notes from a Small Island

“I have a small, tattered clipping that I sometimes carry with me and pull out for purposes of private amusement. It’s a weather forecast from the Western Daily Mail and it says, in toto, “Outlook: Dry and warm, but cooler with some rain.”
― Bill Bryson, Notes from a Small Island

“a taxing slog for an old puffed-out flubba-wubba like me, but worth it for the view, which was sensational—like being on top of the world.”
― Bill Bryson, Notes from a Small Island

“perennial blank—”
― Bill Bryson, Notes from a Small Island

“In shame, I sipped my tea and nibbled at my biscuit. I had never had tea with milk in it before or a biscuit of such rocklike cheerlessness. It tasted like something you would give a budgie to strengthen its beak.”
― Bill Bryson, Notes from a Small Island

“nostalgia such as can be known only by those who remember the days of hot metal typesetting and noisy composing rooms”
― Bill Bryson, Notes from a Small Island

“Built in the hope of distracting workers from the peril of drink, it contained a gymnasium, a laboratory, a billiards room, a library, a reading room, and a lecture and concert hall. Never before had manual workers been given a more lavish opportunity to better themselves, an opportunity that many scores enthusiastically seized. One James Waddington, an untutored woolsorter, became a world authority on linguistics and a leading light of the Phonetic Society of Great Britain and Ireland.”
― Bill Bryson, Notes From A Small Island: Journey Through Britain

“Vince was notorious. He would easily have been the world’s most terrifying human had he but been human. I don’t know quite what he was, other than it was five feet six inches of wiry malevolence in a grubby T-shirt. Reliable rumor had it that he had not been born, but burst fully formed from his mother’s belly and then skittered off to the sewers.”
― Bill Bryson, Notes from a Small Island

“Bradford hat die Rolle seines Lebens darin gefunden, jeden anderen Ort auf diesem Planeten im Vergleich besser abschneiden zu lassen, und es spielt sie sehr gut.”
― Bill Bryson, Notes from a Small Island

“We’re sending ye tae Wapping, ye soft English nancies, and if ye wairk very, very hard and if ye doonae git on ma tits, then mebbe I’ll not cut off yer knackers and put them in ma Christmas pudding. D’ye have any problems with tha’?”
― Bill Bryson, Notes from a Small Island

“to nonlocals”
― Bill Bryson, Notes from a Small Island

“zippy new tax called VAT, which was to be introduced a week or so later. The gist of the advertisement was that while some things would go up in price with VAT, some things would also go down. (Ha!) I”
― Bill Bryson, Notes from a Small Island

“At the far end, a shop called the Boscombe Antique Market had a big sign in the window that said ‘We Buy Anything!’, which seemed an unusually generous offer, so I went inside, gobbed on the counter and barked, ‘How much for that then?’ I didn’t, of course – it was shut – but I’d have liked to. It”
― Bill Bryson, Notes From A Small Island: Journey Through Britain

“Did all that really just happen or have I wandered into some kind of Dada exhibition?”
― Bill Bryson, Notes from a Small Island

“Here is a country that fought and won a noble war, dismantled a mighty empire in a generally benign and enlightened way, created a far-seeing welfare state – in short, did nearly everything right – and then spent the rest of the century looking on itself as a chronic failure. The fact is that this is still the best place in the world for most things – to post a letter, go for a walk, watch television, buy a book, venture out for a drink, go to a museum, use the bank, get lost, seek help, or stand on a hillside and take in a view.”
― Bill Bryson, Notes From A Small Island: Journey Through Britain

“A műszerfal közepén két azonos méretű, kör alakú számlat foglalt helyet. Az egyik nyilvánvalóan a sebességet mutatta, a másikkal ellenben nem tudtam mit kezdeni. Két mutatója volt, az egyik alig vánszorgott, a másik mintha meg se mozdult volna. Egy örökkévalóságig bámultam, mikor - de tényleg - végre-valahára leesett: egy óra volt.”
― Bill Bryson, Notes from a Small Island