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Book: I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Away
Quotes of Book: I'm a Stranger Here Myself:
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  1. Bill Bryson _ I'm a Stranger Here Myself:

    In office buildings and retail premises in which entry is through double doors and one of those doors is locked for no reason, the door must bear a large sign saying: "This Door Is Locked for No Reason.
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  2. Bill Bryson _ I'm a Stranger Here Myself:

    It wasn't until we dropped him at his university dormitory and left him there looking touchingly lost and bewildered amid an assortment of cardboard boxes and suitcases in a spartan room not unlike a prison cell that it really hit home that he was vanishing out of our lives and into his own.
    book-quoteloveparenthoodgrowing-up

  3. Bill Bryson _ I'm a Stranger Here Myself:

    Confused and unable to help, my hair went into panic mode.
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  4. Bill Bryson _ I'm a Stranger Here Myself:

    A computer is a stupid machine with the ability to do incredibly smart things, while computer programmers are smart people with the ability to do incredibly stupid things.
    book-quotetechnology

  5. Bill Bryson _ I'm a Stranger Here Myself:

    On the dashboard of our family car is a shallow indentation about the size of a paperback book. If you are looking for somewhere to put your sunglasses or spare change, it is the obvious place, and it works extremely well, I must say, so long as the car is not actually moving. However, as soon as you put the car in motion ... everything slides off ... It can hold nothing that has not been nailed to it. So I ask you: what then is it for?
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  6. Bill Bryson _ I'm a Stranger Here Myself:

    So here I am, my affections torn between a postal service that never feeds me but can tackle a challenge and one that gives me free tape and prompt service but won't help me out when I can't remember a street name. The lesson to draw from this, of course, is that when you move from one country to another you have to accept that there are some things that are better and some things worse, and there is nothing you can do about it. That may not be the profoundest of insights to take away from a morning's outing, but I did get a free doughnut as well, so on balance I guess I'm happy.
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  7. Bill Bryson _ I'm a Stranger Here Myself:

    ... it occurred to me that never again would he be seven years, one month and six days old, so we had better catch these moments while we can.
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  8. Bill Bryson _ I'm a Stranger Here Myself:

    Coming back to your native land after an absence of many years is a surprisingly unsettling business, a little like waking up from a long coma.
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  9. Bill Bryson _ I'm a Stranger Here Myself:

    Christmas tree stands are the work of the devil and they want you dead.
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  10. Bill Bryson _ I'm a Stranger Here Myself:

    It was one of those sumptuous days when the world is full of autumn muskiness and tangy, crisp perfection: vivid blue sky, deep green fields, leaves in a thousand luminous hues. It is a truly astounding sight when every tree in a landscape becomes individual, when each winding back highway and plump hillside is suddenly and infinitely splashed with every sharp shade that nature can bestow - flaming scarlet, lustrous gold, throbbing vermilion, fiery orange.
    book-quotecolours

  11. Bill Bryson _ I'm a Stranger Here Myself:

    Of all the things I am not very good at, living in the real world is perhaps the most outstanding. I am constantly filled with wonder at the number of things that other people do without any evident difficulty that are pretty much beyond me.
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  12. Bill Bryson _ I'm a Stranger Here Myself:

    Take a moment from time to time to remember that you are alive. I know this sounds a trifle obvious, but it is amazing how little time we take to remark upon this singular and gratifying fact. By the most astounding stroke of luck an infinitesimal portion of all the matter in the universe came together to create you and for the tiniest moment in the great span of eternity you have the incomparable privilege to exist.
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