“Nowadays, ever since the attack on the Pentagon in 2001, the capital has been clamped down. How is this manifested? Giant planters blocking government buildings, giant planters barricading every other street. Theoretically, the concrete flowerpots are solid enough to fend off a truck bomb. And yet the effect is ridiculous, as if we believe we can protect ourselves from suicide bombers by hiding behind blooming pots of marigolds, flowers whose main defensive property is repelling rabbits.”

Source: Assassination Vacation (2005), pp. 23-24

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Sarah Vowell 35
American author, journalist, essayist and social commentator 1969

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