27 Bill Bryson Quotes on Humor

Bill Bryson quotes on humor

1. I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.

2. When you come from Des Moines you either accept the fact without question and settle down with a girl called Bobbie and get a job in the Firestone factory and live there forever and ever or you spend your adolescence moaning at length about what a dump it is and how you can't wait to get out and then you settle down with a local girl named Bobbie and get a job in the Firestone factory and live there forever and ever.

5. 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.

6. I watched a rerun on television of a 1960s comedy programme called 'Mr Ed', which was about a talking horse. Judging by the quality of the jokes, I would guess that Mr Ed wrote his own material.

7. Just down the road stood a little town, which I shall call Dullard lest the people recognize themselves and take me to court or come to my house and batter me with baseball bats.

8. 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?)

9. I mused for a few moments on the question of which was worse, to lead a life so boring that you are easily enchanted or a life so full of stimulus that you are easily bored. But then it occurred to me that musing is a pointless waste of anyone's time, and instead I went off to see if I could find a Baby Ruth candy bar, a far more profitable exercise.

11. Much of the tablecloth was a series of grey smudges outlined in a large, irregular patch of yellow that looked distressingly like a urine stain.

13. The best that can be said for Norwegian television is that it gives you the sensation of a coma without the worry and inconvenience.

14. You have three chromosomes, Bryson. X, Y, and Fuckhead.

18. I have long known that it is part of God's plan for me to spend a little time with each of the most stupid people on earth, and Mary Ellen was proof that even in the Appalachian woods I would not be spared. It became evident that she was a rarity.

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

21. 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.

22. 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.

24. My wife [...] recently put me on a diet after suggesting (a little unkindly, if you ask me), that I was beginning to look like something Richard Branson would try to get airborne.

25. [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).

29. Every dog on the face of the earth wants me dead.

30. After years of patient study (and with cricket there can be no other kind), I have decided that there is nothing wrong with the game that the introduction of golf carts wouldn't fix in a hurry.

31. It is not true that the English invented cricket as a way of making all other human endeavours look interesting and lively; that was merely an unintended side effect. I don't wish to denigrate a sport that is enjoyed by millions, some of them awake and facing the right way, but it is an odd game.

34. 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.

35. I'd turn on the lights, but they're blown. I'd offer you a seat, but there isn't one. I'd offer you a drink from the minibar, but there doesn't appear to be one.' 'It certainly is basic.' 'Basic? It's a bloody cell!

36. There was a lot more joking going on when I was a kid. My dad, for instance, specialised in puns and I remember once we were on vacation in California and we were driving along the San Andreas Fault and he threw a quarter out of the window into the Fault because he said 'he had always wanted to be generous to a fault'.

38. I had also got used to the idea that here [in the UK] you can make quips all the time and in America that can be very dangerous. I wrote about it in one of the books. Once I was going through customs and immigration in Boston, and the guy said as I went past 'Any fruit or vegetables?' and I said 'OK, I'll have four pounds of potatoes if they are fresh' and it was like he was going to take me off and pin me to the floor.

40. I went round to all these minority sports and I couldn't really appreciate them. Fencing, for example, is just 'click, click, click' and it is over. Then they retire. Then they go again 'On guard - click, click, click' and it is over again. You just think, 'what is this sport?' I thought this is really boring and then I went to Judo and it was just the same thing. These two guys just endlessly circling each other, acting as if what they are trying to do is take the others shirt off without him realising this is what they are trying to do. I just thought 'what is this? I don't understand this at all'. Then I went to table tennis, which obviously I could identify with because I had played it myself - not quite at Olympic standard - but I could understand it. It suddenly became clear to me that these people really are so far beyond anything I could ever dream of becoming. I felt really terrible because I hadn't appreciated the fencers. The reason I couldn't follow them was because they were so damn good. Their hands were so quick that I couldn't see what was going on.

42. 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.

58. I can tell you that tonight in Des Moines, Iowa, my home town, people all across the city will be putting a hand to their ears and saying 'What is that sound?', and it will be the sound of Mr De Vito, my High School Careers Officer, spinning in his grave.

59. I was asked what I would like to be said of me in a hundred years from now. I replied '...and he's still sexually active!'