The average Southerner has the speech patterns of someone slipping in and out of consciousness. I can change my shoes and socks faster than most people in Mississippi can speak a sentence.
More Quotes from Bill Bryson:
A bank robber in Los Angeles told the clerk not to give him cash, but to deposit the money in his checking account.Bill Bryson
. . . I happened upon a path that vanished into a wood on the edge of town.
Bill Bryson
I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.
Bill Bryson
English grammar is so complex and confusing for the one very simple reason that its rules and terminology are based on Latin -- a language with which it has precious little in common. In Latin, to take one example, it is not possible to split an infinitive. So in English, the early authorities decided, it should not be possible to split an infinitive either. But there is no reason why we shouldn't, any more than we should forsake instant coffee and air travel because they weren't available to the Romans. Making English grammar conform to Latin rules is like asking people to play baseball using the rules of football. It is a patent absurdity. But once this insane notion became established, grammarians found themselves having to draw up ever more complicated and circular arguments to accommodate the inconsistencies.
Bill Bryson
The remarkable position in which we find ourselves is that we don't actually know what we actually know.
Bill Bryson
Readers Who Like This Quotation Also Like:
Based on Topics: Speech QuotesBased on Keywords: southerner
As I sit down and start to work, I often panic. I stare at the empty piece of music paper. How can I say that my piece will be ready for performance next January when I do not have a recipe for making it happen?
Lukas Foss
We also never undercut representatives' prices. A representative will always be able to sell the discounts in our core business, which are not offered at retail. So it's never more advantageous to buy there.
Andrea Jung
We need criminals to identify ourselves with, to secretly envy and to stoutly punish. They do for us the forbidden, illegal things we wish to do.
Karl A. Menninger