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Behind every bad law, a deep fear.

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
Behinds
Deep
Behind
Law
Fear
Every

More quotes by Sarah Vowell

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I'm not really the scented envelope kid of girl, preferring instead to send yellow Jiffy-lite mailers packed with whatever song is on my mind.
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Buffy's high school was built on top of a vortex of evil, the Hellmouth. And whose wasn't?
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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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There are two kinds of people in the world: the kind who alphabetize their record collections, and the kind who don't.
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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 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.
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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.
Sarah Vowell
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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.
Sarah Vowell
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History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between.
Sarah Vowell
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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.
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That's what I like to call him, the current president. I find it difficult to say or type his name, George W. Bush. I like to call him the current president because it's a hopeful phrase, implying that his administration is only temporary.
Sarah Vowell
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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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Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, Robert Lincoln bought a nice ski lodge.
Sarah Vowell
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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.
Sarah Vowell
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Oh my dear, idealists are the cruelest monsters of them all.
Sarah Vowell
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You know you've reached a new plateau of group mediocrity when even a Canadian is alarmed by your lack of individuality.
Sarah Vowell
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Even writers need relief from words.
Sarah Vowell
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In death, you get upgraded into a saint no matter how much people hated you in life.
Sarah Vowell
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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
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Despite his consistent party-line voting record, some independents and Democrats still think of Senator McCain as the most palatable, independent-minded Republican. But this is the sort of empty compliment a friend of mine once compared to being called “the coolest Osmond.
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