Quotes by Sarah Vowell

The groundswell of outrage over the invasion of Iraq often cited the preemptive war as a betrayal of American ideals. The subtext of the dissent was: This is not who we are. But not if you were standing where I was. It was hard to see the look in that palace tour guides eyes when she talked about the American flag flying over the palace and not realize that ever since 1898, from time to time, this is exactly who we are.

Robert Todd Lincoln, a.k.a. Jinxy McDeath.

For Americans, Acts 16:9 is the high-fructose corn syrup of Bible verses--an all-purpose ingredient well stir into everything from the ink on the Marshall Plan to canisters of Agent Orange. Our greatest goodness and our worst impulses come out of this missionary zeal, contributing to our overbearing (yet not entirely unwarranted) sense of our country as an inherently helpful force in the world. And, as with the apostle Paul, the notion that strangers want our help is sometimes a delusion.

Acts 16:9 is the meddlers motto, simultaneously selfless and self-serving, generous but stuck-up. Into every generation of Americans is born a new crop of buttinskys sniffing out the latest Macedonia that may or may not want their help.

History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between.

By journeys end the brides were much better acquainted with their grooms and more or less pleased with the matches. Sybil Bingham wrote in her diary, thanking God for answering her prayer for filling the void with a husband like Hiram, a treasure rich and undeserved. Having read his insufferable memoir, A Residence of Twenty-one Years in the Sandwich Islands, all I can say is: Im happy for her?

The more history I learn, the more the world fills up with stories.

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

The whole reason I wanted to take Owen to Disney World is that I fear that someday hes 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. Powells cemetery was just too close to Cinderellas Castle for me to pass up.

Wainwright prayed to the graven image of Lafayette, since neither the president nor Congress seemed to be listening. “We, the women of the United States,” she told the bronze Lafayette, “denied the liberty which you helped to gain, and for which we have asked in vain for sixty years, turn to you to plead for us. Speak, Lafayette, dead these hundred years but still living in the hearts of the American people.

In the United States, there was no simpler, more agreeable time.

The thing that drew me to Lafayette as a subject - that he was that rare object of agreement in the ironically named United States - kept me coming back to why that made him unique. Namely, that we the people never agreed on much of anything. Other than a bipartisan consensus on barbecue and Meryl Streep, plus that time in 1942 when everyone from Bing Crosby to Oregonian school children heeded FDRs call to scrounge up rubber for the war effort, disunity is the through line in the national plot - not necessarily as a failing, but as a free peoples privilege. And thanks to Lafayette and his cohorts in Washingtons army, plus the king of France and his navy, not to mention the founding dreamers who clearly did not think through what happens every time one citizens pursuit of happiness infuriates his neighbor, getting on each others nerves is our right.

You know your country has a checkered past when you find yourself sitting around pondering the humanitarian upside of sticking with the British Empire.

Still, compared to him, compared to the people we descend from, I am free of history. Im so free of history I have to get in a car and drive seven states to find it.

All those adorable towheaded kids in the promotional film are going to turn thirteen. Once a family member hits puberty, odds are that everybody is not going to have the same ideals. Unless everybody gets together and agrees that the new ideals involve turning the front yard into a skate ramp and officially changing Dads name to Fuckhead.

The irony of informing nearly naked people in a wilderness setting about the story of naked Adam and Eve eating the fruit of knowledge and inventing the fashion industry due to a sudden need for clothing to hide their shame is not lost on Williams.

--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.

I waited in vain for someone like me to stand up and say that the only thing those of us who dont believe in god have to believe is in other people and that New York City is the best place there ever was for a godless person to practice her moral code. I think it has to do with the crowded sidewalks and subways. Walking to and from the hardware store requires the push and pull of selfishness and selflessness, taking turns between getting out of someones way and them getting out of yours, waiting for a dog to move, helping a stroller up steps, protecting the eyes from runaway umbrellas. Walking in New York is a battle of the wills, a balance of aggression and kindness. Im not saying its always easy. The occasional Watch where youre going, bitch can, I admit, put a crimp in ones day. But I believe all that choreography has made me a better person. The other day, in the subway at 5:30, I was crammed into my sweaty, crabby fellow citizens, and I kept whispering under my breath we the people, we the people over and over again, reminding myself were all in this together and they had as much right - exactly as much right - as I to be in the muggy underground on their way to wherever they were on their way to.

Heaven, such as it is, is right here on earth. Behold: my revelation: I stand at the door in the morning, and lo, there is a newspaper, in sight like unto an emerald. And holy, holy, holy is the coffee, which was, and is, and is to come. And hark, I hear the voice of an angel round about the radio saying, Since my baby left me I found a new place to dwell. And lo, after this I beheld a great multitude, which no man could number, of shoes. And after these things I will hasten unto a taxicab and to a theater, where a ticket will be given unto me, and lo, it will be a matinee, and a film that doeth great wonders. And when it is finished, the heavens will open, and out will cometh a rain fragrant as myrrh, and yea, I have an umbrella.

That year, a middle-aged acquaintance asked me what my favorite book was and I said On the Road. He smiled, said, That was my favorite book at sixteen. At the time , I thought he was patronizing me, that it was going to be my favorite book forever and ever, amen. But he was right. As an adult, Im more of a Gatsby girl-more tragic, more sad, just as interested in what America costs as what it has to offer.