266 Quotes by Sarah Vowell

One of the French officers was horrified that at a dinner in Washington’s tent, His Excellency served the meal not in a succession of courses like in civilization. Apparently Washington “gave, on the same plate, meat, vegetables, and salad.” On the same plate? Were these Americans people or animals?

If Americans can transform Memorial Day, technically a remembrance of all our war dead ever, into the official kickoff of summer, we can handle adapting one demoralizing battle into a wholesome, chipper get-together.

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.

The medieval pilgrimage routes, in which Christians walked from church to church to commune with the innards of saints, are the beginnings of the modern tourism industry.

That’s what we Americans do when we find a place that’s really special. We go there and act exactly like ourselves. And we are a bunch of fun-loving dopes.

I’ve always had these fantasies about being in a normal family in which the parents come to town and their adult daughter spends their entire visit daydreaming of suicide. I’m here to tell you that dreams really do come true.

When Lafayette met him in 1775, the first volume of Raynal’s 1770 History of the Two Indies had already been banned, which is to say it was a popular success, the Catholic Church’s Index of Forbidden Books being the unofficial bestseller list of the day.

I’ve encountered my fair share of war reenactors over the years, but I’ve never seen a reenactment of this banal predicament: a tired woman in a dark house answering a child who is supposed to be asleep that she has no idea when Daddy’s coming home.

With temperatures dropping, how could men without shirts expect to fend off opponents so blatantly well equipped with outerwear that they were nicknamed the redcoats?