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Like Lincoln, I would like to believe the ballot is stronger than the bullet. Then again, he said that before he got shot.

Sarah Vowell

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Sarah Vowell
Age: 54
Born: 1969
Born: December 27
Actor
Author
Journalist
Voice Actor
Writer
Muskogee
Oklahoma
Sarah Jane Vowell
Like
Bullet
Lincoln
Bullets
Shot
Shots
Stronger
Believe
Ballot
Would
Ballots

More quotes by Sarah Vowell

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Why is America the last best hope of Earth? What if it's Liechtenstein? Or, worse, Canada?
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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.
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No cowboys for Canada. Canada got Mounties instead - Dudley Do-Right, not John Wayne. It's a mind-set of Here I come to save the day versus Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker.
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Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, Robert Lincoln bought a nice ski lodge.
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There are people who look forward to spending their sunset years in the sunshine it is my own retirement dream to await my death indoors, dragging strangers up dusty staircases while coughing up one of the most thrilling phrases in the English language: 'It was on this spot…' My fantasy is to one day become a docent.
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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.
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Jesus and Lincoln, Moses and Jefferson can seem so long gone, so unbelievable, so dead.
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Clemenza's overriding responsibility is to his family. He takes a moment out of his routine madness to remember that he had promised his wife that he would bring dessert home. His instruction to his partner in crime is an entire moral manifesto in six little words: 'Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.
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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.
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When one of a culture's guiding credos is that all men are created equal, any person who, say, becomes an expert on, say, nuclear weapons or, say, ecology, i.e., anyone who distinguishes himself through mental excellence, is a nuisance.
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If I looked in the mirror someday and saw no dark circles under my eyes, I would probably look better. I just wouldn't look like me.
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You know, it's always good to have a synonym just for variety.
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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.
Sarah Vowell
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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.
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Radio is the playground of coincidence.
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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.
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I probably am a cranky writer, but I am actually a fairly nice, normal person. Since I'm a grouchy writer, of course I have friends whose books are doing way better than mine.
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I'm always disappointed when I see the word 'Puritan' tossed around as shorthand for a bunch of generic, boring, stupid, judgmental killjoys. Because to me, they are very specific, fascinating, sometimes brilliant, judgmental killjoys who rarely agreed on anything except that Catholics are going to Hell.
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The only thing more dangerous than an idea is a belief. And by dangerous I don't mean thought-provoking. I mean: might get people killed.
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In these fast and fickle times, it’s nice to know that there are some things you can always count on: the enduring brilliance of the last page of The Great Gatsby the near-religious harmonies of the Beach Boys’ “California Girls” and the lifelong friendship of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.
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