Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, Robert Lincoln bought a nice ski lodge.
Sarah Vowell

Assassins and presidents invite the same basic question: Just who do you think you are?
Sarah Vowell

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

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

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

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.
Sarah Vowell

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

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.
Sarah Vowell

I seem to have no problem revealing my crush on the man who murdered Lincoln.
Sarah Vowell

I was a big Nancy Drew reader. Nancy figures it out. Case closed.
Sarah Vowell

I'm a big fan of editing and keeping only the interesting bits in.
Sarah Vowell

In death, you get upgraded into a saint no matter how much people hated you in life.
Sarah Vowell

Jesus and Lincoln, Moses and Jefferson can seem so long gone, so unbelievable, so dead.
Sarah Vowell

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

Most people don't like to talk about violent historical death.
Sarah Vowell

My audience is going to die before I do.
Sarah Vowell

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

One night last summer, all the killers in my head assembled on a stage in Massachusetts to sing show tunes.
Sarah Vowell

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.
Sarah Vowell

Relics are treasured as something close to the divine.
Sarah Vowell