Sarah Vowell Quotes

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• I loved that these two guys argued with each other as if movies actually mattered. Nobody I knew talked about movies that way, but Siskel and Ebert took each movie as it came and talked about whether it was a success on its own terms.

  Sarah Vowell

  Movie, Two, Guy

  FaceBook post by Sarah Vowell from Apr 04, 2013

  45 Copy quote

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

  Sarah Vowell

  Believe, Stronger, Bullets

  Sarah Vowell (2005). “Assassination Vacation”, p.7, Simon and Schuster

  34 Copy quote

• I talk about going to his [George W. Bush's] 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.

  Sarah Vowell

  Drinking, Water, Imagination

  "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart, www.cc.com. February 21, 2006.

  37 Copy quote

• Being a nerd, which is to say going too far and caring too much about a subject, is the best way to make friends I know.

  Sarah Vowell

  Caring, Nerd, Too Much

  FaceBook post by Sarah Vowell from Mar 31, 2010

  25 Copy quote

• Just the other day, I was in my neighborhood Starbucks, waiting for the post office to open. I was enjoying a chocolatey cafe mocha when it occurred to me that to drink a mocha is to gulp down the entire history of the New World. From the Spanish exportation of Aztec cacao, and the Dutch invention of the chemical process for making cocoa, on down to the capitalist empire of Hershey, PA, and the lifestyle marketing of Seattle's Starbucks, the modern mocha is a bittersweet concoction of imperialism, genocide, invention, and consumerism served with whipped cream on top.

  Sarah Vowell

  Aztec, Office, Waiting

  "The Partly Cloudy Patriot". Book by Sarah Vowell, 2001.

  35 Copy quote

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

  Sarah Vowell

  Ideas, Belief, Dangerous

  Sarah Vowell (2008). “The Wordy Shipmates”, p.10, Penguin

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• I have a similar affection for the parenthesis (but I always take most of my parentheses out, so as not to call undue attention to the glaring fact that I cannot think in complete sentences, that I think only in short fragments or long, run-on thought relays that the literati call stream of consciousness but I still like to think of as disdain for the finality of the period).

  Sarah Vowell

  Running, Thinking, Long

  14 Copy quote

• While I gave up God a long time ago, I never shook the habit of wanting to believe in something. So I replaced my creed of everlasting life with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

  Sarah Vowell

  Happiness, Believe, Long

  FaceBook post by Sarah Vowell from Jul 04, 2012

  21 Copy quote

• However, displayed right alongside all the Confederate flag paraphernalia is a bunch of American flag merch – American flag place mats, patriotic “body crystals,” flag stickers you attach to your skin. Personally, I’m small-minded and literal enough that I see the two symbols as contradictory, especially in a time of war. But I fear that the consumer who buys a Confederate flag coffee cup, which she will then put on her American flag place mat, is the sort of sophisticated thinker who is open-minded enough that she is capable of hating blacks and Arabs at the same time.

  Sarah Vowell

  Hate, War, Coffee

  9 Copy quote

• In the U.S.A., we want to sing along with the chorus and ignore the verses, ignore the blues. . . No one is going to hold up a cigarette lighter in a stadium to the tune of "mourn together, suffer together." City on a hill, though -- that has a backbeat we can dance to. And that's why the citizens of the United States not only elected and reelected Ronald Reagan; that's why we ARE Ronald Reagan.

  Sarah Vowell

  Cities, Suffering, Together

  Sarah Vowell (2008). “The Wordy Shipmates”, p.47, Penguin

  15 Copy quote

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

  Sarah Vowell

  Quagmire, American History, Knows

  Sarah Vowell (2003). “The Partly Cloudy Patriot”, p.156, Simon and Schuster

  11 Copy quote

• What are you hiding? No one ever asks that.

  Sarah Vowell

  Hiding, Asks

  15 Copy quote

• 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.

  Sarah Vowell

  Ethos, America, Goal

  Sarah Vowell (2008). “The Wordy Shipmates”, p.33, Penguin

  13 Copy quote

• 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.

  Sarah Vowell

  Coffee, Drink, Motto

  Sarah Vowell (2001). “Take the Cannoli: Stories From the New World”, p.208, Simon and Schuster

  14 Copy quote

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

  Sarah Vowell

  Two, People, Records

  Sarah Vowell (2003). “The Partly Cloudy Patriot”, p.174, Simon and Schuster

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  Sarah Vowell

  Mean, Ideas, People

  Sarah Vowell (2008). “The Wordy Shipmates”, p.10, Penguin

  12 Copy quote

• History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between.

  Sarah Vowell

  War, Murder, Natural

  Sarah Vowell (2005). “Assassination Vacation”, p.208, Simon and Schuster

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• 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.

  Sarah Vowell

  Mean, Thinking, Individuality

  Sarah Vowell (2013). “Take the Cannoli: Stories From the New World”, p.209, Simon and Schuster

  11 Copy quote

• You know, it's always good to have a synonym just for variety.

  Sarah Vowell

  Synonym, Knows, Variety

  Source: www.pbs.org

  13 Copy quote

• No cowboys for Canada. Canada got Mounties instead - Dudley Do-Right, not John Wayne. It's a mind-set of "Here I come to save the day" versus "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker.

  Sarah Vowell

  Cowboy, Mind, Yay

  Sarah Vowell (2003). “The Partly Cloudy Patriot”, p.149, Simon and Schuster

  9 Copy quote

• Despite his consistent party-line voting record, some independents and Democrats still think of Senator McCain as the most palatable, independent-minded Republican. But this is the sort of empty compliment a friend of mine once compared to being called “the coolest Osmond.

  Sarah Vowell

  Party, Independent, Thinking

  12 Copy quote

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

  Sarah Vowell

  Individuality, Groups, Mediocrity

  Sarah Vowell (2005). “Assassination Vacation”, p.144, Simon and Schuster

  8 Copy quote

• My lips are chapped from the winds of change.

  Sarah Vowell

  Wind, Lips, Winds Of Change

  Sarah Vowell (2013). “Radio On: A Listener's Diary”, p.10, St. Martin's Griffin

  21 Copy quote

• The modern mocha is a bittersweet concoction of imperialism, genocide, invention, and consumerism served with whipped cream on top

  Sarah Vowell

  Aztec, Cacao, Cafes

  Sarah Vowell (2003). “The Partly Cloudy Patriot”, p.42, Simon and Schuster

  23 Copy quote

• But when I am around strangers, I turn into a conversational Mount St. Helens. I'm dormant, dormant, quiet, quiet, old-guy loners build log cabins on the slopes of my silence and then, boom, it's 1980. Once I erupt, they'll be wiping my verbal ashes off their windshields as far away as North Dakota.

  Sarah Vowell

  Silence, Guy, Loner

  FaceBook post by Sarah Vowell from May 18, 2015

  4 Copy quote

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