Quotes from Sarah Vowell

More than anyone on earth, Lafayette was mournfully aware of the uniqueness of the American republic he had fought to build.

Cashing in on the hoopla, the souvenir trade cranked out an unprecedented pile of Lafayette-themed merch.

I love walking. Walking might be my favorite pastime. It's one of the reasons I moved to the pedestrian paradise that is NYC. It's hiking that I try to avoid.

Lafayette mania circa 1824 was specific to him and cannot be written off as the product of a simpler, more agreeable time.

I like to call him the current president because it's a hopeful phrase, implying that his administration is only temporary.

I don't have a driver's license (phobia).

In the gravedigger scene in act V, Hamlet looks upon an anonymous skull and jokes that even Alexander the Great decomposed into dust that could have been used to plug a beer barrel. But when Hamlet is shown this skull of his old friend Yorick, the prince becomes unspeakably sentimental and sad because he knew him.

the first and last time in history a Frenchman shirked rest and relaxation to get back to work.

It is unfair of me to say so, but the slogan Booth shouted from the stage of Ford's Theatre, the over-blown, self-important, pseudo-Shakespearean blather, being etched on the sign marking his death feels like the stamp of approval.

It would never occur to me to wear pink, just as it would never occur to Michael Douglas to play a poor person.

Lincoln, of course, was giggling at the moment of impact; Booth knowing the play Lincoln was watching by heart, chose a laugh Lin on purpose to dampen the noise of his Derringer's report.

how many days without a radio it will take to get my songs back?

Unleashing a killing spree on Quaker property is a bit of a faux pas

In death, you get upgraded into a saint no matter how much people hated you in life.

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

I was a big Nancy Drew reader. Nancy figures it out. Case closed.

Not that I want the current president killed. I will, for the record and for the FBI agent assigned to read this and make sure I mean no harm, clearly state that while I am obsessed with death, I am against it.

What are you hiding? No one ever asks that.

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.

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.

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.

We are flawed creatures, all of us. Some of us think that means we should fix our flaws. But get rid of my flaws and there would be no one left.

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 talk about going to [George W. Bush's] Inauguration and crying when he took the oath, 'cause I was so afraid he was going to wreck the economy and muck up the drinking water'... the failure of my pessimistic imagination at that moment boggles my mind now.