# Quote — Bill Bryson, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid

> And then suddenly I would realize that I couldn’t remember, hadn’t actually consciously experienced, any of the last forty-seven properties I had visited, and didn’t know if I had left a paper or just walked up to the door, stood for a moment like an underfunctioning automaton, and turned around and walked away again. It is not easy to describe the sense of self-disappointment that comes with reaching the end of your route and finding that there are sixteen undelivered papers in your bag and you don’t have the least idea—not the least idea—to whom they should have gone. I spent much of my prepubescent years first walking an enormous newspaper route, then revisiting large parts of it. Sometimes twice.

- Author: [Bill Bryson](https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson.md)
- Book: [The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid](https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson/the-life-and-times-of-the-thunderbolt-kid.md)
- Page: 122
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Bryson#The_Life_And_Times_of_the_Thunderbolt_Kid_(2006)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson/the-life-and-times-of-the-thunderbolt-kid/and-then-suddenly

## More from this book

> He hit the water—impacted really is the word for it—at over six hundred miles an hour, with a report so loud that it made birds fly out of trees up to three miles away. At such a speed water effectively becomes a solid. I don’t believe Mr. Milton penetrated it at all, but just bounced off it about fifteen feet, limbs suddenly very loose, and then lay on top of it, still, like an autumn leaf, spinning gently.

p. 78 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson/the-life-and-times-of-the-thunderbolt-kid/he-hit-the.md)

> Nearly a quarter of American men were in the Armed forces [in 1968]. The rest were in school, in prison, or were George W. Bush.

p. 193 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson/the-life-and-times-of-the-thunderbolt-kid/nearly-a-quarter.md)

> The makers of sneakers also thoughtfully pocked the soles with numberless crevices, craters, chevrons, mazes, crop circles, and other rubbery hieroglyphs, so that when you stepped in a moist pile of dog shit, as you most assuredly did within three bounds of leaving the house, they provided additional absorbing hours of pastime while you cleaned them out with a stick, gagging quietly but oddly content.

p. 34 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-bryson/the-life-and-times-of-the-thunderbolt-kid/the-makers-of-sneakers.md)