Quotes from Sarah Vowell

did not hesitate to be disagreeable to preserve my independence"—applied

The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave," he wrote. "It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.

Chevalier d'Éon de Beaumont, had previously served France as both a male soldier in the Seven Years' War and a female secret agent who infiltrated the Russian monarchy, successfully befriending and convincing a Russian czarina not to become an ally of France's enemy Great Britain. No one was entirely sure of his/her gender, and he/she kept them guessing.

His pictures of this region summarize the soulful emptiness of a country where, as Gertrude Stein observed, 'there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is.

The model for South America was Broadway actress Maxine Elliot. North America, a pretty blonde, was modeled on Maud Coleman Woods of Charlottesville, Virginia. (Sadly, she would die of typhoid fever that summer, ten days before McKinley arrived in Buffalo, thereby never living to see herself on a coaster, every southern belle's dream.)

The whole reason I wanted to take Owen to Disney World is that I fear that someday he's going to look through his childhood photo album and wonder why all his vacations with his aunt took place at places like the McKinley Memorial and Wounded Knee. And yet here we are. Powell's cemetery was just too close to Cinderella's Castle for me to pass up.

Never have I enjoyed such swearing, before or since. Sir, on that memorable day, he swore like an angel from Heaven.

Experience is terribly important. You'll notice that the congressmen who want to hold up the government are all junior people and new to the game. And of course they will say, 'Oh, it's Washington cynicism, where they all compromise and work out backroom deals.' But that's actually how democracy works." Which

First, from this side of the twentieth century, après strip malls, fast-food franchises, glass boxes, housing projects, and other architectural gaffes, it's fun to look back on this dilemma of to-column-or-not-to-column, because honestly, the only question most Americans ask about a new building at this point is basically: Is it a soul-sucking eyesore of cheap-ass despair? It's not? Whew.

There is a jarring disconnect between what I want my real-life intelligence officers to be doing versus what I want my fake TV intelligence officers to be doing.

a man without birth, without courage, without conduct. For my part, I declare, sir, it shall never be said that I made such a man my master.

asked the boy to "consider himself at all times as one of his family." Washington was referring to his military family or aides-de-camp, the same way John Adams described the aide Alexander Hamilton as "one of General Washington's Family." So when Washington said "family," he meant "chummy minion." The orphaned Lafayette heard "son.

Sir," I said, "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.

The neighborhood of Gramercy Park, where Edwin used to live, was built to look like London, which is to say that its considerable beauty is skin deep while its heart beats with the ugliness of monarchy. And at its very center, inside the gates keeping out the riffraff that is all New York, stands the statue of the sad and fancy Edwin Booth, dressed as Hamlet, his signature role.

In other words, the most ardent republicans since the fall of Rome were asking their king to help them prevail over the representative legislature of the world's oldest constitutional monarchy, the great symbol and protector of British freedom. From

Yes, they're a little biased there," I agree. Mike smiles at this understatement, knowing as I do that saying they're a little biased in Mudd's favor at the Mudd-family-run Mudd home in Maryland is like saying cheese steaks are kind of associated with Philadelphia.

Jefferson's pretty phrases were incomplete without the punctuation of French gunpowder. That

the amateur historian's next stop after Boy, people used to be so stupid is People: still stupid.

Having studied art history, as opposed to political history, I tend to incorporate found objects into my books. Just as Pablo Picasso glued a fragment of furniture onto the canvas of Still Life with Chair Caning, I like to use whatever's lying around to paint pictures of the past--traditional pigment like archival documents but also the added texture of whatever bits and bobs I learn from looking out bus windows or chatting up people I bump into on the road.

But there's still this combination of governmental ineptitude, shortsightedness, stinginess, corruption, and neglect that affected the Continentals before, during, and after Valley Forge that twenty-first-century Americans are not entirely unfamiliar with. While

We the people have never agreed on much of anything. ... [D]isunity is the through-line in the national plot. Not necessarily as a failing, but as a free people's privileged.

Oh, if only that was the last time in America that the extreme left and extreme right broke down and made a mess of things, leaving everyone in the center to suffer.

Ah, spring. May 1778, specifically. Coming up on cannon weather. But then who needs to pay for gunpowder when heatstroke kills for free?

I resist the urge to raise my hand and utter the four most reassuring words in the English language: I know a guy.