# In a Sunburned Country

- Author: [Bill Bryson](https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson.md)
- Quotes: 9
- Book page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson/in-a-sunburned-country

## Quotes

> 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.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson/in-a-sunburned-country/it-is-not.md)

> 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.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson/in-a-sunburned-country/the-opera-house.md)

> I clearly re-call standing on in downtown Melbourne, so freshly arrived that I still smelled of (possibly even glistened from) the insecticide with which the flight attendants sprayed the plane before arrival, watching the clanging trams and swirl of humanity, and thinking, “Good Lord, there's a country here.”

p. 156 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson/in-a-sunburned-country/i-clearly-re-call.md)

> Every dog on the face of the earth wants me dead.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson/in-a-sunburned-country/every-dog-on-the.md)

> 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.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson/in-a-sunburned-country/after-years-of-patient.md)

> "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." "Basic? It's a bloody cell!"

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson/in-a-sunburned-country/id-turn-on-the.md)

> So without an original or helpful thought in my head, I just sat for some minutes and watched these poor disconnected people shuffle past. Then I did what most white Australians do. I read my newspaper and drank my coffee and didn't see them anymore.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson/in-a-sunburned-country/so-without-an-original.md)

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

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson/in-a-sunburned-country/above-all-what.md)

> It was impossible to determine what he was saying, but I imagined he was telling all those present that they were nongs and maggots. I decided I quite liked watching the news with the sound off.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson/in-a-sunburned-country/it-was-impossible.md)