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Frases de Bill Bryson
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William McGuire "Bill" Bryson, OBE es un escritor estadounidense, autor de diversos libros sobre viajes, sobre la lengua inglesa y de divulgación científica. Ha vivido la mayor parte de su vida adulta en el Reino Unido. Actualmente reside en North Yorkshire, Inglaterra. Wikipedia  

✵ 8. diciembre 1951   •   Otros nombres بیل بروسون
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Bill Bryson: 117   frases 14   Me gusta

Frases célebres de Bill Bryson

“Mientras hacía este libro aprendí sobre todo dos cosas. La primera es que no existe nada, ni una sola cosa, que no sea increíble e interesante cuando te detienes a examinarla… La otra cosa que aprendí es que tenemos una suerte bárbara de estar aquí.”

Bill Bryson

“Suponiendo que las cosas sigan siendo en general como ahora, el océano Atlántico se expandirá hasta llegar a ser mucho mayor que el Pacífico. Gran parte de California se alejará flotando y se convertirá en una especie de Madagascar del Pacífico. África se desplazará hacia el norte, uniéndose a Europa, borrando de la existencia al Mediterráneo y haciendo elevarse una cadena de montañas de majestuosidad himaláyica, que irá desde París hasta Calcuta. Australia colonizará las islas situadas al norte de ella y se unirá mediante algunos ombligos ístmicos a Asia. Éstos son resultados futuros, pero no acontecimientos futuros. Los acontecimientos están sucediendo ya. Mientras estamos aquí sentados, los continentes andan a la deriva, como hojas en un estanque.”

Bill Bryson libro Una breve historia de casi todo

A Short History of Nearly Everything

“Considera que, durante 3.800 millones de años, un período de tiempo que nos lleva más allá del nacimiento de las montañas, los ríos y los mares de la Tierra, cada uno de tus antepasados por ambas ramas ha sido lo suficientemente sano para reproducirse y le han bendecido el destino y las circunstancias lo suficiente para vivir el tiempo necesario para hacerlo. Ninguno de tus respectivos antepasados pereció aplastado, devorado, ahogado, de hambre, atascado, ni fue herido prematuramente ni desviado de otro modo de su objetivo vital: entregar una pequeña carga de material genético a la pareja adecuada en el momento oportuno para perpetuar la única secuencia posible de combinaciones hereditarias, que pudiese desembocar casual, asombrosa y demasiado brevemente en ti.”

Bill Bryson

“… Para que estés ahora aquí, tuvieron que agruparse de algún modo, de una forma compleja y extrañamente servicial, trillones de átomos errantes. Es una disposición tan especializada y tan particular que nunca se ha intentado antes y que sólo existirá esta vez. Durante los próximos muchos años –tenemos esa esperanza-, estas pequeñas partículas participarán sin queja en todos los miles de millones de habilidosas tareas cooperativas necesarias para mantenerte intacto y permitir que experimentes ese estado tan agradable, pero tan a menudo infravalorado, que se llama existencia. Por qué se tomaron esta molestia los átomos es todo un enigma. Ser tú no es una experiencia gratificante a nivel atómico. Pese a toda su devota atención, tus átomos no se preocupan en realidad por ti, de hecho ni siquiera saben que estás ahí. Ni siquiera saben que ellos están ahí. Son, después de todo, partículas ciegas, que además no están vivas. (Resulta un tanto fascinante pensar que si tú mismo te fueses deshaciendo con unas pinzas, átomo por átomo, lo que producirías sería un montón de fino polvo atómico, nada del cual habría estado nunca vivo pero todo él habría sido en otro tiempo tú.) Sin embargo, por la razón que sea, durante el período de tu experiencia, tus átomos responderán a un único impulso riguroso: que tú sigas siendo tú.”

Bill Bryson libro Una breve historia de casi todo

A Short History of Nearly Everything

“Considera el hecho de que durante 3,8 millones de años, un período de tiempo mayor que las montañas, los ríos y los océanos de la Tierra, cada uno de tus antepasados ​​por ambas líneas ha sido lo suficientemente atractivo como para encontrar un compañero, lo suficientemente sano para reproducirse, y lo suficientemente bendecido por el destino y las circunstancias para vivir el tiempo suficiente para hacerlo. Ni uno solo de tus antepasados pertinentes fue aplastado, devorado, ahogado, muerto de hambre, hundido, clavado, prematuramente herido, o desviado de cualquier otra manera de su búsqueda vital de entregar una pequeña carga de material genético a la pareja adecuada en el momento oportuno a fin de perpetuar la única secuencia posible de combinaciones hereditarias que podrían resultar — con el tiempo, sorprendentemente, y muy brevemente — en ti.”

Bill Bryson

Variante: onsidera el hecho de que durante 3,8 millones de años, un período de tiempo mayor que las montañas, los ríos y los océanos de la Tierra, cada uno de tus antepasados ​​por ambas líneas ha sido lo suficientemente atractivo como para encontrar un compañero, lo suficientemente sano para reproducirse, y lo suficientemente bendecido por el destino y las circunstancias para vivir el tiempo suficiente para hacerlo. Ni uno solo de tus antepasados pertinentes fue aplastado, devorado, ahogado, muerto de hambre, hundido, clavado, prematuramente herido, o desviado de cualquier otra manera de su búsqueda vital de entregar una pequeña carga de material genético a la pareja adecuada en el momento oportuno a fin de perpetuar la única secuencia posible de combinaciones hereditarias que podrían resultar — con el tiempo, sorprendentemente, y muy brevemente — en ti.

Bill Bryson: Frases en inglés

“The tearoom lady called me love. All the shop ladies called me love and most of the men called me mate. I hadn't been here twelve hours and already they loved me.”

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Bill Bryson libro Notes from a Small Island

Fuente: Notes from a Small Island

“I refer of course to the soaring wonder of the age known as the Eiffel Tower. Never in history has a structure been more technologically advanced, materially obsolescent, and gloriously pointless all at the same time.”

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Bill Bryson libro At Home: A Short History of Private Life

Fuente: At Home: A Short History of Private Life

“Christmas tree stands are the work of the devil and they want you dead.”

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Bill Bryson

Fuente: I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

“One planet, one experiment.” If”

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Bill Bryson libro Una breve historia de casi todo

A Short History of Nearly Everything

““Tell me, did they specify ’asshole’ on the job description, or did you take a course?“”

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Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Fuente: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 14 (p. 187)

“But what is life to a lichen? Yet its impulse to exist, to be, is every bit as strong as ours — arguably even stronger. If I were told that I had to spend decades being a furry growth on a rock in the woods, I believe I would lose the will to go on.”

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Bill Bryson libro Una breve historia de casi todo

Page 336
A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003)

“The thing about the Army Corps of Engineers is that they don’t build things very well.”

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Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Fuente: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 15 (p. 198)

“Absolute brain size does not tell you everything — or possibly sometimes even much. Elephants and whales both have brains larger than ours, but you wouldn't have much trouble outwitting them in contract negotiations.”

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Bill Bryson libro Una breve historia de casi todo

Pages 446-447, footnote
A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003)

“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.”

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Bill Bryson

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

“Now Stonewall Jackson is a man worth taking an interest in. Few people in history have achieved greater fame in a shorter period with less useful activity in the brainbox than Gen. Thomas J. Jackson. (long list of character deficiencies elided)…
His ineradicable fame rests almost entirely on the fact that he had a couple of small but inspiring victories when elsewhere Southern troops were being slaughtered and routed and by dint of having the best nickname any soldier has ever enjoyed.”

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Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Fuente: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 13 (p. 171)

“When you come from Des Moines you either accept the fact without question and settle down with a girl called Bobbi 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 Bobbi and get a job in the Firestone factory and live there forever and ever.”

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Bill Bryson

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

“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.”

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Bill Bryson

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

“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.”

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Bill Bryson

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

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

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Bill Bryson libro Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe

Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe (1991)

“I know this goes without saying, but Stonehenge really was the most incredible accomplishment. It took five hundred men just to pull each sarsen, plus a hundred more to dash around positioning the rollers. Just think about it for a minute. Can you imagine trying to talk six hundred people into helping you drag a fifty-ton stone eighteen miles across the countryside and muscle it into an upright position, and then saying, "Right, lads! Another twenty like that, plus some lintels and maybe a couple of dozen nice bluestones from Wales, and we can party!"”

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Bill Bryson libro Notes from a Small Island

Whoever was the person behind Stonehenge was one dickens of a motivator, I'll tell you that.
Notes from a Small Island (1995)

“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.”

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Bill Bryson

Interview with Stanford's Newsletter (June 2001)

“Why, it's a perfect little city. If you have never been to Durham, go there at once. Take my car. It's wonderful.”

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Bill Bryson libro Notes from a Small Island

Bill Bryson was later awarded an honorary doctorate and appointed to the position of Chancellor of the University of Durham http://www.dur.ac.uk/news.service/more.php?item_type=news&itemID=829.
Notes from a Small Island (1995)

“Above all, what is oddest to the outsider is that Aborigines just aren't there.”

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Bill Bryson

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

“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."”

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Bill Bryson

"Basic? It's a bloody cell!
In a Sunburned Country (US), Down Under (UK) (2000)

“The Opera House is a splendid edifice, and I wish to take nothing away from it, but my heart belongs to the Harbour Bridge. It's not as festive, but it is far more dominant – you can see it from every corner of the city, creeping into frame from the oddest angles, like an uncle who wants to get into every snapshot. From a distance it has a kind of gallant restraint, majestic but not assertive, but up close it is all might. It soars above you, so high that you could pass a ten-storey building beneath it, and looks like the heaviest thing on earth. Everything that is in it – the stone blocks in its four towers, the latticework of girders, the metal plates, the six-million rivets (with heads like halved apples) – is the biggest of its type you have ever seen. This is a bridge built by people who have had an Industrial Revolution, people with mountains of coal and ovens in which you could melt down a battleship. The arch alone weighs 30,000 tons. This is a great bridge.”

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Bill Bryson

Pages 80-81
In a Sunburned Country (US), Down Under (UK) (2000)

“Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth's mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result -- eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly -- in you.”

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Bill Bryson libro Una breve historia de casi todo

Page 3
A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003)

“In France, a chemist named Pilatre de Rozier tested the flammability of hydrogen by gulping a mouthful and blowing across an open flame, proving at a stroke that hydrogen is indeed explosively combustible and that eyebrows are not necessarily a permanent feature of one's face.”

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Bill Bryson libro Una breve historia de casi todo

Page 53
A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003)

“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.”

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Bill Bryson

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

“In those days kitchen matches were heavy-duty implements—more like signal flares than the weedy sticks we get today. You could strike them on any hard surface and fling them at least fifteen feet and they wouldn’t go out. Indeed, even when being beaten vigorously with two hands, as when lodged on the front of one’s sweater, they seemed positively determined not to fail.”

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Bill Bryson

Fuente: The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006), p. 170

“Well, I didn't ever think about Australia much. To me Australia had never been very interesting, it was just something that happened in the background. It was Neighbours and Crocodile Dundee movies and things that never really registered with me and I didn't pay any attention to it at all. I went out there in 1992, as I was invited to the Melbourne Writers Festival, and I got there and realised almost immediately that this was a really really interesting country and I knew absolutely nothing about it. As I say in the book, the thing that really struck me was that they had this prime minister who disappeared in 1967, Harold Holt and I had never heard about this. I should perhaps tell you because a lot of other people haven't either. In 1967 Harold Holt was prime minister and he was walking along a beach in Victoria just before Christmas and decided impulsively to go for a swim and dove into the water and swam about 100 feet out and vanished underneath the waves, presumably pulled under by the ferocious undertow or rips as they are called, that are a feature of so much of the Australian coastline. In any case, his body was never found. Two things about that amazed me. The first is that a country could just lose a prime minister — that struck me as a really quite special thing to do — and the second was that I had never heard of this. I could not recall ever having heard of this. I was sixteen years old in 1967. I should have known about it and I just realised that there were all these things about Australia that I had never heard about that were actually very very interesting. The more I looked into it, the more I realised that it is a fascinating place. The thing that really endeared Australia to me about Harold Holt's disappearance was not his tragic drowning, but when I learned that about a year after he disappeared the City of Melbourne, his home town, decided to commemorate him in some appropriate way and named a municipal swimming pool after him. I just thought: this is a great country.”

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Bill Bryson

The pool was under construction before he disappeared and is located in the electorate he represented.
Interview with Stanford's Newsletter (June 2001)

“They [the American authorities] can't actually believe that anyone would want to not be an American," he says. "It's not enough to send them a letter and tell them you've become British; you've got to go to the embassy to formally renounce your US citizenship. I'm a little worried that when I do this they'll pack me off to Guantanamo.”

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Bill Bryson

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

“So to sleep on the sleeping porch required preparation. First, you put on long underwear, pajamas, jeans, a sweatshirt, your grandfather’s old cardigan and bathrobe, two pairs of woolen socks on your feet and another on your hands, and a hat with earflaps tied beneath the chin. Then you climbed into bed and were immediately covered with a dozen bed blankets, three horse blankets, all the household overcoats, a canvas tarpaulin, and a piece of old carpet. I’m not sure that they didn’t lay an old wardrobe on top of that, just to hold everything down. It was like sleeping under a dead horse. For the first minute or so it was unimaginably cold, shockingly cold, but gradually your body heat seeped in and you became warm and happy in a way you would not have believed possible only a minute or two before. It was bliss. Or at least it was until you moved a muscle. The warmth, you discovered, extended only to the edge of your skin and not a micron farther. There wasn’t any possibility of shifting positions. If you so much as flexed a finger or bent a knee, it was like plunging them into liquid nitrogen.”

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Bill Bryson

Fuente: The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006), p. 140

“In the Smokies, over 90 percent of Fraser firs—a noble tree, unique to the southern Appalachian highlands—are sick or dying, from a combination of acid rain and the depredations of a moth called the balsam woolly adelgid. Ask a park official what they are doing about it and he will say, “We are monitoring the situation closely.””

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Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

For this, read: “We are watching them die.”
Fuente: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 7 (p. 93)

“There is always a little more toothpaste in the tube. Think about it.”

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Bill Bryson

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

“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?)”

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Bill Bryson

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