Literary Birthday – 27 December – Sarah Vowell

Happy Birthday, Sarah Vowell, born 27 December 1969.

Nine Quotes

1. Being a nerd, which is to say going too 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 …
2. I was a big Nancy Drew reader. Nancy figures it out. Case closed.
3. History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between.
4. If there is a recurring theme in Garfield’s diaries it’s this: I’d rather be reading.
5. Like Lincoln, I would like to believe the ballot is stronger than the bullet. Then again, he said that before he got shot.
6. The only thing more dangerous than an idea is a belief.
7. American history is a quagmire, and the more one knows, the quaggier the mire gets.
8. Dig deep into its communitarian ethos and it reads more like an America that might have been, an America fervently devoted to the quaint goals of working together and getting along. Of course, this America does exist. It’s called Canada.
9. 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 is an American author, journalist, and essayist. She has written non-fiction books on American history and culture, most recently Unfamiliar Fishes and Lafayette in the Somewhat United States.

Source for Image

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sarah_Vowell_at_Lamar_University_6_April_2010.jpg

Loren-zo, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

by Amanda Patterson

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