Top Sarah Vowell Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Sarah Vowell Biography

Sarah Jane Vowell (born December 27, 1969) is an American historian, author, journalist, essayist, social commentator and actress. Often referred to as a "social observer," Vowell has written seven nonfiction books on American history and culture. She was a contributing editor for the radio program This American Life on Public Radio International from 1996 to 2008, where she produced numerous commentaries and documentaries and toured the country in many of the program's live shows. She was also the voice of Violet in the animated film The Incredibles and has reprised her role in its sequel.

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Sarah Vowell Quotes

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.

Cowboy, John, Mind, Mounties, Versus, Yay

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

History, Murder, Natural, War

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.

Caring, Make, Nerd, Too Much, Way

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.

Couple, Hokey, Reading, Sound, Swooned, Times

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

Evil, High, School, Top, Vortex

After Hiram Bingham built the first church on Oahu the student recalls, "When it was completed some of the natives said among themselves, 'That house of worship built by the haoles is a place in which they will pray us all to death. It is meant to kill us. "

Atheist, Church, Death, House, Oahu, Student

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.

America, Ethos, Goal, Together, Working

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.

Ashes, Build, Guy, Log, Loner, Silence

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

American History, Gets, Knows, Quaggier, Quagmire

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.

Await, Dream, Retirement, Sunset, Years

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.

Disasters, Ideas, Polio Vaccine, Rarely, War

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

Collections, Kinds, People, Record, Records, Two

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.

Actually, Guy, Movie, Talked, Terms, Two

Assassins and presidents invite the same basic question: Just who do you think you are?

Assassins, President, Question, Same, Think, Thinking

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.

Aztec, Cocoa, Enjoying, Entire, Office, Waiting

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

Citizenship, Duty, Goofing, Paying Taxes, Taxes, Voting

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

Definition, Definitions, Government, Patriot, Skeptical, True

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.

Arabs, Coffee, Consumer, Hate, Symbols, War

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.

Believe, Everlasting, Happiness, Long, Wanting

Until that moment, I hadn’t realized that I embarked on the project of touring historic sites and monuments having to do with the assassinations of Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley right around the time my country iffily went off to war, which is to say right around the time my resentment of the current president cranked up into contempt. Not that I want the current president killed. Like that director, I will, for the record (and for the FBI agent assigned to read this and make sure I mean no harm – hello there), clearly state that while I am obsessed with death, I am against it.

Assassinations, Country, Garfield, Killed, Mean, War

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