266 Quotes by Sarah Vowell

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

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.

I didn’t come from any kind of academic background, but I lived in a college town and I knew people who weren’t without pretense. There was this idea in the town that if something was European it would be good.

Freedom of expression truly exists only when a society’s most repugnant nitwits are allowed to spew their nonsense in public.

Mutual Criticism required a member of the group to stand up in front of everybody and listen to the enumeration of his or her faults. The bright side of being that night’s subject for criticism was the rare treat at Oneida of being the center of attention. The downside was that everyone you knew and loved was allowed, even encouraged, to look into your eyes and ask, “You know what your problem is?

Not until Theodore Roosevelt resigned his prestigious position as assistant secretary of the navy in 1898 to fight with the Rough Riders in the Cuban dirt would there be a rich man as weirdly rabid to join American forces in combat as Lafayette was. The two shared a child’s ideal of manly military glory. Though in Lafayette’s defense, he was an actual teenager, unlike the thirty-nine-year-old TR.

I probably am a cranky writer, but I am actually a fairly nice, normal person. Since I’m a grouchy writer, of course I have friends whose books are doing way better than mine.

Another reason I’m intrigued with the hanged of Salem, especially the women, is that a number of them aroused suspicion in the first place because they were financially independent, or sharp-tongued, or kept to themselves. In other words, they were killed off for living the same sort of life I live right now but with longer skirts and fewer cable channels.

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.