William

“Dismissed!” shouted Irina that night in their little apartment. “How does one get fired from Communism!”
― Amor Towles, Table for Two

“The Mediterranean, which is now only a week from us, has before our eyes shrunk into a lake; our British and Irish channels are scarcely broader than the old Firth of Forth; the Rhine, the Danube, the Thames, the Medway, the Ganges etc., have contracted their streams to infinitely less than half their lengths and breadths, and the great lakes of the world are rapidly drying into ponds!”
― Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century

“Is there anything, apart from a really good chocolate cream pie and receiving a large unexpected cheque in the post, to beat finding yourself at large in a foreign city on a fair spring evening, loafing along unfamiliar streets in the long shadows of a lazy sunset, pausing to gaze in shop windows or at some church or lovely square or tranquil stretch of quayside, hesitating at street corners to decide whether that cheerful and homy restaurant you will remember fondly for years is likely to lie down this street or that one? I just love it. I could spend my life arriving each evening in a new city.”
― Bill Bryson, Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe

“Romans park their cars the way I would park if I had just spilled a beaker of hydrochloric acid on my lap.”
― Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe