Quotes by Sarah Vowell

• The whole point of Louis Armstrong is that no one can really figure him out. There was a while where I thought you could try.
• History is full of really good stories. That's the main reason I got into this racket: I want to make the argument that history is interesting.
• I didn't come from any kind of academic background, but I lived in a college town and I knew people who weren't without pretense. There was this idea in the town that if something was European it would be good.
• I discovered that Robert Todd Lincoln was there for each of the first three assassinations. I wanted to write about the Lincoln Memorial, so when I found out he had attended its dedication, that helped focus it further.
• I get younger people who watch Conan or The Daily Show, but before that it was mostly people who knew me from public radio. Those people are kind of old.
• I loved that these two guys argued with each other as if movies actually mattered. Nobody I knew talked about movies that way, but Siskel and Ebert took each movie as it came and talked about whether it was a success on its own terms.
• I seem to have no problem revealing my crush on the man who murdered Lincoln.
• I was a big Nancy Drew reader. Nancy figures it out. Case closed.
• 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.
• Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, Robert Lincoln bought a nice ski lodge.
• We go in to liberate Cuba, but Cuba still isn't free; we don't really think through what we'll do after the initial treaty is signed, but we're still occupying. There's chaos and torture and finally an outcry.
• Assassins and presidents invite the same basic question: Just who do you think you are?
• The one time I was an actor, it happened to be in a globally dominant juggernaut. That was lucky.
• The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Civil War-when I really think about them they all seem about as likely as the parting of the Red Sea.
• Relics are treasured as something close to the divine.
• Part of the success of This American Life, I think, is due to the fact that none of us sound like we should be on the radio. We don't sound professional; we sound like people you would know.
• One night last summer, all the killers in my head assembled on a stage in Massachusetts to sing show tunes.
• 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.
• My audience is going to die before I do.
• Most people don't like to talk about violent historical death.
• Like Lincoln, I would like to believe the ballot is stronger than the bullet. Then again, he said that before he got shot.
• Jesus and Lincoln, Moses and Jefferson can seem so long gone, so unbelievable, so dead.
• What are you hiding? No one ever asks that.
• I'm a big fan of editing and keeping only the interesting bits in.
• Life is like a painting; it gets messy, but the mistakes? They're just part of the masterpiece.