Sarah Vowell Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• 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

• The only people who know about me are people who would know about me.

  Sarah Vowell

  People, Knows

  12 Copy quote

• Being a nerd, which is to say going to far and caring too much about a subject, is the best way to make friends I know. For me, the spark that turns an acquaintance into a friend has usually been kindled by some shared enthusiasm like detective novels or Ulysses S. Grant.

  Sarah Vowell

  Caring, Nerd, Ulysses's Grant

  Sarah Vowell (2003). “The Partly Cloudy Patriot”, p.91, Simon and Schuster

  5 Copy quote

• There are people who look forward to spending their sunset years in the sunshine; it is my own retirement dream to await my death indoors, dragging strangers up dusty staircases while coughing up one of the most thrilling phrases in the English language: 'It was on this spot…' My fantasy is to one day become a docent.

  Sarah Vowell

  Dream, Retirement, Sunset

  FaceBook post by Sarah Vowell from May 06, 2010

  9 Copy quote

• Robert Todd Lincoln, a.k.a. Jinxy McDeath.

  Sarah Vowell

  Sarah Vowell (2005). “Assassination Vacation”, p.236, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

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

  Sarah Vowell

  Monsters, Idealist, Dear

  Sarah Vowell (2005). “Assassination Vacation”, p.219, Simon and Schuster

  10 Copy quote

• In these fast and fickle times, it’s nice to know that there are some things you can always count on: the enduring brilliance of the last page of The Great Gatsby; the near-religious harmonies of the Beach Boys’ “California Girls”; and the lifelong friendship of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.

  Sarah Vowell

  Girl, Beach, Religious

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

  9 Copy quote

• No one I know actually reads what I write, so thank heavens for you strangers.

  Sarah Vowell

  Writing, Heaven, Stranger

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  Sarah Vowell

  Boys, Thinking, America

  Sarah Vowell (2013). “Take the Cannoli: Stories From the New World”, p.152, Simon and Schuster

  5 Copy quote

• My ideal picture of citizenship will always be an argument, not a sing-along.

  Sarah Vowell

  Argument, Citizenship, Ideals

  Sarah Vowell (2003). “The Partly Cloudy Patriot”, p.169, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

• Owen is the most Hitchcockian preschooler I ever met. He's three. He knows maybe ninety word and one of them is 'crypt'?

  Sarah Vowell

  Three, Ninety, Mets

  Sarah Vowell (2005). “Assassination Vacation”, p.190, Simon and Schuster

  5 Copy quote

• Presidents and presidential assassins are like Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. Even though one city is all about sin and the other is all about salvation, they are identical, one-dimensional company towns built up by the sheer will of true believers.

  Sarah Vowell

  Cities, Lakes, Vegas

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

  8 Copy quote

• The whole point of Louis Armstrong is that no one can really figure him out. There was a while where I thought you could try.

  Sarah Vowell

  Trying, Figures, Armstrong

  20 Copy quote

• I'm always disappointed when I see the word 'Puritan' tossed around as shorthand for a bunch of generic, boring, stupid, judgmental killjoys. Because to me, they are very specific, fascinating, sometimes brilliant, judgmental killjoys who rarely agreed on anything except that Catholics are going to Hell.

  Sarah Vowell

  Stupid, Catholic, Brilliant

  Sarah Vowell (2008). “The Wordy Shipmates”, p.22, Penguin

  7 Copy quote

• History is full of really good stories. That's the main reason I got into this racket: I want to make the argument that history is interesting.

  Sarah Vowell

  Interesting, Stories, Want

  6 Copy quote

• But I have never had the privilege of unhappiness in Happy Valley. California is about the good life. So a bad life there seems so much worse than a bad life anywhere else. Quality is an obsession there—good food, good wine, good movies, music, weather, cars. Those sound like the right things to shoot for, but the never-ending quality quest is a lot of pressure when you’re uncertain and disorganized and, not least, broker than broke. Some afternoons a person just wants to rent Die Hard, close the curtains, and have Cheerios for lunch.

  Sarah Vowell

  Good Life, Wine, Lunch

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Sarah Vowell

  Couple, Reading, Sound

  Sarah Vowell (2001). “Take the Cannoli: Stories From the New World”, p.168, Simon and Schuster

  9 Copy quote

• The people who visit the [Lincoln] memorial always look like an advertisement for democracy, so bizarrely, suspiciously diverse that one time I actually saw a man in a cowboy hat standing there reading the Gettysburg Address next to a Hasidic Jew. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had linked arms with a woman in a burka and a Masai warrior, to belt out ‘It’s a Small World After All,’ flanked by a chorus line of nuns and field-tripping, rainbow-skinned schoolchildren

  Sarah Vowell

  Reading, Warrior, Men

  9 Copy quote

• I'm a big fan of editing and keeping only the interesting bits in.

  Sarah Vowell

  Editing, Interesting, Fans

  9 Copy quote

• 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.

  Sarah Vowell

  Spiritual, Earth, Deeds

  Sarah Vowell (2011). “Unfamiliar Fishes”, p.28, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

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

  Sarah Vowell

  Voting, Paying Taxes, Citizenship

  Sarah Vowell (2003). “The Partly Cloudy Patriot”, p.61, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

• When one of a culture's guiding credos is that "all men are created equal," any person who, say, becomes an expert on, say, nuclear weapons or, say, ecology, i.e., anyone who distinguishes himself through mental excellence, is a nuisance.

  Sarah Vowell

  Men, Excellence, Experts

  Sarah Vowell (2002). “The Partly Cloudy Patriot”, p.112, Simon and Schuster

  6 Copy quote

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

  Sarah Vowell

  School, Evil, Vortex

  Sarah Vowell (2003). “The Partly Cloudy Patriot”, p.109, Simon and Schuster

  7 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. For me, the spark that turns an acquaintance into a friend has usually been kindled by some shared enthusiasm . . . At fifteen, I couldn't say two words about the weather or how I was doing, but I could come up with a paragraph or two about the album Charlie Parker with Strings. In high school, I made the first real friends I ever had because one of them came up to me at lunch and started talking about the Cure.

  Sarah Vowell

  Real, School, Caring

  FaceBook post by Sarah Vowell from Aug 29, 2015

  6 Copy quote

• Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, Robert Lincoln bought a nice ski lodge.

  Sarah Vowell

  Nice, Slave, Skis

  Sarah Vowell (2005). “Assassination Vacation”, p.14, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

Page 2 of 4

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin