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. Sarah Vowell More Quotes by Sarah Vowell More Quotes From Sarah Vowell In death, you get upgraded into a saint no matter how much people hated you in life. Sarah Vowell saint matter people 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. Sarah Vowell vegas cities lakes Assassins and presidents invite the same basic question: Just who do you think you are? Sarah Vowell assassins president thinking After Hiram Bingham built the first church on Oahu the student recalls, "When it was completed some of the natives said among themselves, 'That house of worship built by the haoles is a place in which they will pray us all to death. It is meant to kill us." Sarah Vowell church atheist house 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. Sarah Vowell dedication focus writing I hated the lost colony; in second grade, we were doing American History, and they said, We don't know what happened to them. That drove me nuts. That lost colony drove me crazy. Sarah Vowell madness crazy nuts Being a nerd, which is to say going to far and caring too much about a subject, is the best way to make friends I know. For me, the spark that turns an acquaintance into a friend has usually been kindled by some shared enthusiasm like detective novels or Ulysses S. Grant. Sarah Vowell nerd ulyssess-grant caring 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. Sarah Vowell college people ideas Why is America the last best hope of Earth? What if it's Liechtenstein? Or, worse, Canada? Sarah Vowell what-if earth america One night last summer, all the killers in my head assembled on a stage in Massachusetts to sing show tunes. Sarah Vowell tunes summer night Owen is the most Hitchcockian preschooler I ever met. He's three. He knows maybe ninety word and one of them is 'crypt'? Sarah Vowell ninety mets three I guess if I had to pick a spiritual figurehead to possess the deed to the entirety of Earth, I'd go with Buddha, but only because he wouldn't want it. Sarah Vowell deeds earth spiritual Along with voting, jury duty, and paying taxes, goofing off is one of the central obligations of American citizenship. Sarah Vowell citizenship paying-taxes voting But when I am around strangers, I turn into a conversational Mount St. Helens. I'm dormant, dormant, quiet, quiet, old-guy loners build log cabins on the slopes of my silence and then, boom, it's 1980. Once I erupt, they'll be wiping my verbal ashes off their windshields as far away as North Dakota. Sarah Vowell loner guy silence If I'm still wistful about On the Road, I look on the rest of the Kerouac oeuvre--the poems, the poems!--in horror. Read Satori in Paris lately? But if I had never read Jack Kerouac's horrendous poems, I never would have had the guts to write horrendous poems myself. I never would have signed up for Mrs. Safford's poetry class the spring of junior year, which led me to poetry readings, which introduced me to bad red wine, and after that it's all just one big blurry condemned path to journalism and San Francisco. Sarah Vowell reading writing spring Radio is the playground of coincidence. Sarah Vowell playgrounds radio coincidence Relics are treasured as something close to the divine. Sarah Vowell relics treasured divine My audience is going to die before I do. Sarah Vowell audience dies 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. Sarah Vowell fbi-agents president mean Most people don't like to talk about violent historical death. Sarah Vowell violent historical people
