Tune your television to any channel it doesn't receive and about 1 percent of the dancing static you see is accounted for by this ancient remnant of the Big Bang. The next time you complain that there is nothing on, remember that you can always watch the birth of the universe.Bill Bryson
A hydrogen atom in a cell at the end of my nose was once in an elephant's trunk. A carbon atom in my cardiac muscle was once in the tail of a dinosaur.Bill Bryson
If you imagine the 4,500 billion odd years of Earth's history compressed into a normal earthly day, then life begins very early, about 4 A.M., with the rise of the first simple, single-celled organisms, but then advances no further for the next sixteen hours.Bill Bryson
Geologists are never at a loss for paperweights.Bill Bryson
If a potato can produce vitamin C, why can't we? Within the animal kingdom only humans and guinea pigs are unable to synthesize vitamin C in their own bodies. Why us and guinea pigs? No one knows.Bill Bryson
We humans are just a momentary flicker on a small and temporary planet. But that doesn't make us insignificant — it makes every moment and every action count all the more.Bill Bryson
It is easy to overlook this thought that life just is. As humans we are inclined to feel that life must have a point. We have plans and aspirations and desires. We want to take constant advantage of the intoxicating existence we've been endowed with. But what's life to a lichen?...Bill Bryson
The more I learned, the more I realized how like a poplar tree I was — in fact, how like a poplar tree everyone is.Bill Bryson
We live in a universe whose age we can't quite compute, surrounded by stars whose distances we don't altogether know, filled with matter we can't identify, operating in conformance with physical laws whose properties we don't truly understand.Bill Bryson
There is no end to the things that are not there.Bill Bryson