Sarah Vowell citations

“We are flawed creatures, all of us. Some of us think that means we should fix our flaws. But get rid of my flaws and there would be no one left.”

“I no longer drink nearly as much as I used to but, still, my motto is Sine coffea nihil sum. Without coffee, I'm nothing.”

“Like Lincoln, I would like to believe the ballot is stronger than the bullet. Then again, he said that before he got shot.”

“Buffy's high school was built on top of a vortex of evil, the Hellmouth. And whose wasn't?”

“The only thing more dangerous than an idea is a belief.”

“There are two kinds of people in the world: the kind who alphabetize their record collections, and the kind who don't.”

“The true American patriot is by definition skeptical of the government.”

“I guess if I had to pick a spiritual figurehead to possess the deed to the entirety of Earth, I'd go with Buddha, but only because he wouldn't want it.”

“When I think about my relationship with America, I feel like a battered wife: Yeah, he knocks me around a lot, but boy, he sure can dance.”

“Except for the people who were there that one day they discovered the polio vaccine, being part of history is rarely a good idea. History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between.”

“Behind every bad law, a deep fear.”

“You know you've reached a new plateau of group mediocrity when even a Canadian is alarmed by your lack of individuality.”

“Dig deep into its communitarian ethos and it reads more like an America that might have been, an America fervently devoted to the quaint goals of working together and getting along. Of course, this America does exist. It's called Canada.”

“American history is a quagmire, and the more one knows, the quaggier the mire gets.”

“That's what I like to call him, "the current president." I find it difficult to say or type his name, George W. Bush. I like to call him "the current president" because it's a hopeful phrase, implying that his administration is only temporary.”

“Oh my dear, idealists are the cruelest monsters of them all.”

“If I looked in the mirror someday and saw no dark circles under my eyes, I would probably look better. I just wouldn't look like me.”

“Along with voting, jury duty, and paying taxes, goofing off is one of the central obligations of American citizenship.”

“Robert Todd Lincoln, a. k. a. Jinxy McDeath.”

“That, to me, is the quintessential experience of living in the United States: constantly worrying whether or not the country is about to fall apart.”

“A couple of times he called the second he'd finished reading a novel and just had to tell me about it, and I know it sounds hokey and librarianish to say so, but I just swooned when he did that.”

“The only thing more dangerous than an idea is a belief. And by dangerous I don't mean thought-provoking. I mean: might get people killed.”

“I understand why other people would want to stay in B&Bs. They're pretty. They're personal. They're “quaint,” a polite way of saying “no TV.” They are “romantic,” i. e., every object large enough for a flower to be printed on it is going to have a flower printed on it. They're “cozy,” meaning that a guest has to keep her belongings on the floor because every conceivable flat surface is covered in knickknacks, except for the one knickknack she longs for, a remote control.”

“…Clemenza's overriding responsibility is to his family. He takes a moment out of his routine madness to remember that he had promised his wife that he would bring dessert home. His instruction to his partner in crime is an entire moral manifesto in six little words: 'Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.”

“Going to Ford's Theatre to watch the play is like going to Hooters for the food.”

“Frank Sinatra is the first punk… punk comes out of nowhere… punk is… a rumor that spreads… that guts and perseverence mean more than anything else…”

“I talk about going to his Inauguration and crying when he took the oath, 'cause I was so afraid he was going to "wreck the economy and muck up the drinking water"… the failure of my pessimistic imagination at that moment boggles my mind now.”

“[Martin Luther King, Jr. ] concluded the learned discourse that came to be known as the 'loving your enemies' sermon this way: "So this morning, as I look into your eyes and into the eyes of all my brothers in Alabama and all over America and over the world, I say to you,'I love you. I would rather die than hate you.'" Go ahead and reread that. That is hands down the most beautiful, strange, impossible, but most of all radical thing a human being can say. And it comes from reading the most beautiful, strange, impossible, but most of all radical civics lesson ever taught, when Jesus of Nazareth went to a hill in Galilee and told his disciples, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you."”

“…the huge Jackson Pollock canvas that is the U. S. A.: vast, murky, splotched and slapped together by a drunk.”