Quotes from Sarah Vowell

The happiness that follows sadness is never the same as that which came before it.

The only thing stopping this address from turning into a slacker parable is the absence of the word "dude.

First of all, let's not forget about Cod.

To establish such a forthright dream of decency, who wouldn't sign up to shoot at a few thousand Englishmen, just as long as Mr. Bean wasn't among them?

joie de vivre.

I am invariably the odd man out on tours like this. The only people who take them are kids who are forced to endure them and elderly retirees. I am always either the oldest person on a tour, or the youngest. I prefer to be the youngest if only because usually that means I'm the prettiest by default.

The egomania required to be president or a presidential assassin makes the two types brothers of sorts. Presidents and presidential assassins are like Las Vegas and Salt Lake City that way. Even though one city is all about sin and the other is all about salvation, they are identical, one-dimensional company towns built up out of the desert by the sheer will of true believers. The assassins and the presidents invite the same basic question: Just who do you think you are?

Has our enslavement to dopamine—to the instant hits of validation that come with a well-crafted tweet or Snapchat streak—made us happier? I suspect it has simply made us less unhappy, or rather less aware of our unhappiness, and that our phones are merely new and powerful antidepressants of a non-pharmaceutical variety

What are you going to do? Will you soon begin the siege of the Capital?

If the churches came to understand that the greatest threat to faith today is not hedonism but distraction, perhaps they might begin to appeal anew to a frazzled digital generation.

the cheapest, most pleasurable way for a country of strangers to get to know each other and the rest of the world is through reading.

David, you don't want to get rid of the cracks and the crevices in the building because that's where the ghosts hide. And if you get rid of the ghosts, the Chelsea will just be any other building.

one candle will light ten thousand.

Saratoga was the turning point of the war, the most spectacular patriot victory to date.

one learns that his bed was so short because most people back then slept sitting up;

Wall Comes Down, No Big Whoop.

As I recall, the cover of Time the week the Wall fell read, "Wall Comes Down, No Big Whoop.

What if my country is destroying itself? Could I leave? Should I? And if so, what time's the next train to Montreal? Well, maybe not Montreal.

the nineteenth-century monument in front of the Monmouth County courthouse in Freehold, New Jersey

What's the address?

Going to Fords Theatre to watch the play is like going to Hooters for the food.

United States . . . gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.

I am pro plaque. New York is lousy with them and I love how spotting them can jazz up even the most mundane errand.

I've been lucky enough to go on swell walks with talkative people all over the world and there really is something speedier and hopped up and deep about the magnificently blabbermouthed nature of friendship in New York.