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William „Bill“ McGuire Bryson, OBE, ist ein US-amerikanischer Journalist und Schriftsteller. Berühmt wurde er vor allem durch seine ebenso informativen wie humorvollen Reiseberichte aus Europa, den Vereinigten Staaten und Australien. Bryson war von 2005 bis Ende 2011 Kanzler der renommierten britischen University of Durham, die ihm die Ehrendoktorwürde verlieh. Wikipedia  

✵ 8. Dezember 1951  •  Andere Namen بیل بروسون
Bill Bryson Foto
Bill Bryson: 121 Zitate6 Gefällt mir

Bill Bryson Berühmte Zitate

„Menschen spalteten das Atom und erfanden Fernsehen, Nylon und löslichen Kaffee, bevor sie das Alter ihres eigenen Planeten herausgefunden hatten.“

Bill Bryson

„Wenn wir ein Lebewesen damit beauftragen wollten, sich in der Einsamkeit des Kosmos um Lebendiges zu kümmern, zu überwachen, was daraus wird und wohin es geht, sollte man für diese Aufgabe keine Menschen auswählen.“

Bill Bryson

„Aus unserer Sicht ist besonders bemerkenswert, wie sich für uns alles zum Guten gewendet hat. Hätte das Universum bei seiner Entstehung nur ein kleines bisschen anders ausgesehen - wäre die Schwerkraft geringfügig stärker oder schwächer gewesen oder wäre die Ausdehnung nur ein wenig schneller oder langsamer vonstatten gegangen -, dann hätte es wahrscheinlich nie stabile Elemente gegeben, die dich und mich und die Erde, auf der wir stehen, hätten bilden können. Bei einer geringfügig stärkeren Gravitation wäre wahrscheinlich das ganze Universum wie ein schlecht aufgestelltes Zelt in sich zusammengebrochen, und ohne genau die richtigen Werte hätte es weder die richtigen Dimensionen und Bestandteile noch die richtige Dichte gehabt.“

Bill Bryson

„Was das Leben sonst auch sein mag, auf der Ebene der Chemie ist es erstaunlich profan: Kohlenstoff, Wasserstoff, Sauerstoff und Stickstoff, ein wenig Calcium, ein Schuss Schwefel, eine kleine Prise von ein paar anderen ganz gewöhnlichen Elementen - nichts, was man nicht in jeder normalen Apotheke finden würde -, das ist alles, was man braucht. Das einzig Besondere an den Atomen, die Sie bilden, besteht darin, dass sie Sie bilden. Und das ist natürlich das Wunder des Lebens.“

Bill Bryson

„Das Fazit aus alledem lautet: Wir leben in einem Universum, dessen Alter wir nicht berechnen können, umgeben von Sternen, deren Entfernung wir nicht kennen, zwischen Materie, die wir nicht identifizieren können, und alles funktioniert nach physikalischen Gesetzen, deren Eigenschaften wir eigentlich nicht verstehen.“

Bill Bryson buch Eine kurze Geschichte von fast allem

A Short History of Nearly Everything

„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 buch Notes from a Small Island

Notes from a Small Island

„Kriegsgefangenenentschädigungsgesetz (a law pertaining to war reparations)“

Bill Bryson buch The Mother Tongue

The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way

„Wirtschaftstreuhandgesellschaft (business trust company)“

Bill Bryson buch The Mother Tongue

The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way

„Die Menschen in der Urzeit haben oft Dinge getan, die nicht einfach nur überraschend, sondern geradezu unfasslich sind.“

Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson: Zitate auf Englisch

“On April 3, 1956, according to news reports, a Mrs. Julia Chase of Hagerstown, Maryland, while on a tour of the White House, slipped away from her tour group and vanished into the heart of the building. For four and a half hours, Mrs. Chase, who was described later as “dishevelled, vague and not quite lucid,” wandered through the White House, setting small fires—five in all. That’s how tight security was in those days: a not-quite-lucid woman was able to roam unnoticed through the executive mansion for more than half a working day.”

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Bill Bryson

Quelle: The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006), p. 62

“He hit the water—impacted really is the word for it—at over six hundred miles an hour, with a report so loud that it made birds fly out of trees up to three miles away. At such a speed water effectively becomes a solid. I don’t believe Mr. Milton penetrated it at all, but just bounced off it about fifteen feet, limbs suddenly very loose, and then lay on top of it, still, like an autumn leaf, spinning gently.”

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Bill Bryson

Quelle: The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006), p. 78

“One of my duties, this week, is to open the new Ustinov college," he confesses, "and while I'm delighted that Durham should honour its former chancellor this way — and I sincerely hope it continues this tradition for me — I can't help feeling that an American university would only have done so had the chancellor also handed over a substantial amount of dosh.”

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Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson: The accidental chancellor (November 15, 2005)

“It would be lovely to think I had become a genius," he smiles, "but the fact is that I've forgotten most of it. Occasionally I can be watching University Challenge and a stray fact emerges from the recesses of my subconscious that I didn't know I knew, but for the most part I'm as vague on the details as I ever was.”

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Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson: The accidental chancellor (November 15, 2005)

“I remember being profoundly amazed that anyone would suppose that a little wooden desk would provide a safe haven in the event of an atomic bomb being dropped on Des Moines. But evidently they all took the matter seriously, for even the teacher, Miss Squat Little Fat Thing, was inserted under her desk, too—or at least as much of her as she could get under, which was perhaps 40 percent. Once I realized that no one was watching, I elected not to take part. I already knew how to get under a desk and was confident that this was not a skill that would ever need refreshing.”

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Bill Bryson

Quelle: The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006), p. 117

“If the mattress stains were anything to go by, a previous user had not so much suffered from incontinence as rejoiced in it. He had evidently included the pillow in his celebrations.”

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Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Quelle: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 6 (p. 81)

“It is natural human impulse to think of evolution as a long chain of improvements, of a never-ending advance towards largeness and complexity — in a word, towards us. We flatter ourselves. Most of the real diversity in evolution has been small-scale. We large things are just flukes — an interesting side branch.”

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Bill Bryson buch Eine kurze Geschichte von fast allem

Page 311
A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003)

“Every dog on the face of the earth wants me dead.”

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Bill Bryson

In a Sunburned Country (US), Down Under (UK) (2000)

“And then suddenly I would realize that I couldn’t remember, hadn’t actually consciously experienced, any of the last forty-seven properties I had visited, and didn’t know if I had left a paper or just walked up to the door, stood for a moment like an underfunctioning automaton, and turned around and walked away again. It is not easy to describe the sense of self-disappointment that comes with reaching the end of your route and finding that there are sixteen undelivered papers in your bag and you don’t have the least idea—not the least idea—to whom they should have gone. I spent much of my prepubescent years first walking an enormous newspaper route, then revisiting large parts of it. Sometimes twice.”

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Bill Bryson

Quelle: The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006), p. 122

“I bought a copy of the Nashville Tennessean out of a metal box, just to see what was happening in the world. The principal story indicated that the state legislature, in one of those moments of enlightenment with which the southern states often strive to distinguish themselves, was in the process of passing a law forbidding schools from teaching evolution. Instead they were to be required to instruct that that the earth was created by God, in seven days, sometime, oh, before the turn of the century. The article reminded us that this was not a new issue in Tennessee. The little town of Dayton—not far from where Katz and I now sat, as it happened—was the scene of the famous Scopes trial in 1925, when the state prosecuted a schoolteacher named John Thomas Scopes for rashly promulgating Darwinian hogwash. As nearly everyone knows, Clarence Darrow, for the defense, roundly humiliated William Jennings Bryan, for the prosecution, but what most people don’t realize is that Darrow lost the case. Scopes was convicted, and the law wasn’t overturned in Tennessee until 1967. And now the state was about to bring the law back, proving conclusively that the danger for Tennesseans isn’t so much that they may be descended from apes as overtaken by them.”

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Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Quelle: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 8 (pp. 107-108)

“According to an opinion poll, 13 per cent of women in the United States cannot say whether they wear their tights under their knickers or over them. That's something like 12 million women walking around in a state of chronic foundation garment uncertainty. Perhaps because I so seldom wear ladies' clothing I don't fully appreciate the challenge involved, but I am almost certain that if I did wear tights with knickers I would know which was on top. More to the point, if a stranger with a clipboard came up to me in the street and asked me how my underwear was configured, I don't believe I would tell him that I didn't know.”

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Bill Bryson

I'm a Stranger Here Myself (US), Notes From a Big Country (UK) (1998)

“Disassemble the cells of a sponge (by passing them through a sieve, for instance), then dump them into a solution, and they will find their way back together and build themselves into a sponge again. You can do this to them over and over, and they will doggedly reassemble because, like you and me and every other living thing, they have one overwhelming impulse: to continue to be.”

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Bill Bryson buch Eine kurze Geschichte von fast allem

Page 380
A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003)

“A friend Alan and I ended up in an Outback pub in a place called Daly Waters and apparently, he says, in the course of this very lively evening we spent there I offered to do a house swap with a family from Korea. We weren't sure whether they were from North Korea or South Korea.”

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Bill Bryson

Interview with Stanford's Newsletter (June 2001)

“Excuse me, but I just have to say this. You are more stupid than a paramecium.”

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Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Quelle: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 8 (p. 106)

“I assume he was descended from apes like all the rest of us, but clearly in his case it had been a fairly gentle slope.”

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Bill Bryson

The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America (1989)

“It was impossible to determine what he was saying, but I imagined he was telling all those present that they were nongs and maggots. I decided I quite liked watching the news with the sound off.”

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Bill Bryson

In a Sunburned Country (US), Down Under (UK) (2000)

“America was entering the age not just of the automobile but of the retarded attention span.”

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Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Quelle: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 18 (p. 234)

“… I had some suggestions [about fencing]. I thought that you could encourage surprise attacks. I thought that would be very good. I kind of liked the idea of arming one guy with a conventional sword but giving the other a pikestaff. My favourite was the idea of blindfolding one of the competitors or blindfolding them both and spinning them around a bit so they were a little bit unstable and then just pushing them towards each other. It would make each match go on a bit longer.”

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Bill Bryson

Interview with Stanford's Newsletter (June 2001)

“America is an outstandingly dangerous place. Consider this: every year in New Hampshire a dozen or more people are killed crashing their cars into moose. Now correct me if I am wrong, but this is not something that is likely to happen to you on the way home from Sainsbury's.”

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Bill Bryson

I'm a Stranger Here Myself (US), Notes From a Big Country (UK) (1998)

“[I relaxed] my customary aversion to consulting a book by anyone so immensely pratty as to put "Ph. D." after his name (I don't put Ph. D. after my name on my books, after all — and not just because I don't have one).”

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Bill Bryson

Bryson was later awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Durham
I'm a Stranger Here Myself (US), Notes From a Big Country (UK) (1998)

“My father liked Iowa. He lived his whole life in the state, and is even now working his way through eternity there, in Glendale Cemetery in Des Moines.”

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Bill Bryson

The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America (1989)

“Nearly a quarter of American men were in the Armed forces [in 1968]. The rest were in school, in prison, or were George W. Bush.”

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Bill Bryson

Quelle: The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006), p. 193

““Virginia?” he said, as if I had asked him if there was anywhere local we could get a dose of syphilis.”

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Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Quelle: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 8 (p. 108)

“As Edward P. Tryon of Columbia University once put it: "In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our universe is simply one of those things that happen from time to time." To which adds Guth: "Although the creation of a universe might be very unlikely, Tryon emphasized that no one had counted the failed attempts."”

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Bill Bryson buch Eine kurze Geschichte von fast allem

On the Big Bang
A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003)

“We couldn't place their accents but we thought the smaller one might be Australian since he seemed so at home down under.”

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Bill Bryson buch Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe

Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe (1991)

“By almost universal agreement, the most vague and ineffectual of all [Presidents] was Millard Fillmore, who succeeded to the office in 1850 upon the death of Zachary Taylor, and spent the next three years demonstrating how the country would have been run if they had just propped Taylor up in a chair with cushions.”

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Bill Bryson

I'm a Stranger Here Myself (US), Notes From a Big Country (UK) (1998)

“It would be a great abuse of my position to write that it was Northwest Airlines that treated us in this shoddy and inexcusable way, so I won't.”

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Bill Bryson

I'm a Stranger Here Myself (US), Notes From a Big Country (UK) (1998)

“Three things alone are certain when you venture into a loft: that you will crack your head on a beam at least twice, that you will get cobwebs draped over your face, and that you will not find what you went looking for.”

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Bill Bryson

I'm a Stranger Here Myself (US), Notes From a Big Country (UK) (1998)

“Blackpool's illuminations are nothing if not splendid, and they are not splendid.”

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Bill Bryson buch Notes from a Small Island

Notes from a Small Island (1995)

“I knew more things in the first ten years of my life than I believe I have known at any time since. I knew everything there was to know about our house for a start. I knew what was written on the undersides of tables and what the view was like from the tops of bookcases and wardrobes. I knew what was to be found at the back of every closet, which beds had the most dust balls beneath them, which ceilings the most interesting stains, where exactly the patterns in wallpaper repeated. I knew how to cross every room in the house without touching the floor, where my father kept his spare change and how much you could safely take without his noticing (one-seventh of the quarters, one-fifth of the nickels and dimes, as many of the pennies as you could carry). I knew how to relax in an armchair in more than one hundred positions and on the floor in approximately seventy- five more. I knew what the world looked like when viewed through a Jell-O lens. I knew how things tasted—damp washcloths, pencil ferrules, coins and buttons, almost anything made of plastic that was smaller than, say, a clock radio, mucus of every variety of course—in a way that I have more or less forgotten now. I knew and could take you at once to any illustration of naked women anywhere in our house, from a Rubens painting of fleshy chubbos in Masterpieces of World Painting to a cartoon by Peter Arno in the latest issue of The New Yorker to my father’s small private library of girlie magazines in a secret place known only to him, me, and 111 of my closest friends in his bedroom.”

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Bill Bryson

Quelle: The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006), p. 36

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