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Book: Assassination Vacation
Quotes of Book: Assassination Vacation
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  1. Sarah Vowell _ Assassination Vacation

    Lincoln, of course, was giggling at the moment of impact; Booth knowing the play Lincoln was watching by heart, chose a laugh Lin on purpose to dampen the noise of his Derringer's report.
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  2. Sarah Vowell _ Assassination Vacation

    But the first thing a present-day visitor notices is that it's exceedingly gay. A life-size, fully dressed Garfield stands on top of a giant shaft.
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  3. Sarah Vowell _ Assassination Vacation

    In the gravedigger scene in act V, Hamlet looks upon an anonymous skull and jokes that even Alexander the Great decomposed into dust that could have been used to plug a beer barrel. But when Hamlet is shown this skull of his old friend Yorick, the prince becomes unspeakably sentimental and sad because he knew him.
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  4. Sarah Vowell _ Assassination Vacation

    I don't have a driver's license {phobia}.
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  5. Sarah Vowell _ Assassination Vacation

    I like to call him "the current president" because it's a hopeful phrase, implying that his administration is only temporary.
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  6. Sarah Vowell _ Assassination Vacation

    It is unfair of me to say so, but the slogan Booth shouted from the stage of Ford's Theatre, the over-blown, self-important, pseudo-Shakespearean blather, being etched on the sign marking his death feels like the stamp of approval.
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  7. Sarah Vowell _ Assassination Vacation

    In the forensics novels the contents of a victim's pockets on the night of her death Say Something about her character. My Ford's Theatre ticket stub and Jimmy Carter key chain say that I am the corniest, goody-goody person in town. Luckily, I survived the evening unscathed so no one will ever find out about that losery Jimmy Carter key chain.
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  8. Sarah Vowell _ Assassination Vacation

    Sir," I said, "except for the people who were there that one day they discovered the polio vaccine, being part of history is rarely a good idea. History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between."
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  9. Sarah Vowell _ Assassination Vacation

    Before the verb "to electrocute" came to define death by electricity, Edison advocated that the verb be named for his nemesis, that a person who had been electrocuted would have been westinghoused instead. I bet Westinghouse came up with some possible definitions of what it meant to be edisoned himself.
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  10. Sarah Vowell _ Assassination Vacation

    Back inside, I'm shown an antique cabinet in which members of the community, famous for their homegrown produce, dried herbs. The Oneida Community was an upstate tourist attraction right from the start, second, Valesky says, to Niagara Falls. I'm taking the same guided tour offered a hundred and fifty years ago to prim rubbernecks who came here to peep at sex fiends. I wonder how many of my vacationing forebears went home disappointed? They thought they were taking the train to Gomorrah but instead they got to watch herbs dry. Valesky opens a drawer in the herb cabinet so I can get a whiff. He mentions that back in the day, when one tourist was shown the cabinet she rudely asked her community-member guide, "What's that odor?" To which the guide replied, "Perhaps it's the odor of crushed selfishness." Valesky grins. "How about that for a utopian answer?" To my not particularly utopian nose, crushed selfishness smells a lot like cilantro.
    book-quoteselfishnesssmellsoneida

  11. Sarah Vowell _ Assassination Vacation

    One of the slight variances between the Stalwarts and their fellow Republicans the Half-Breeds is that the Half-Breeds, partly out of frustration with the Civil War sainthood of Grant, were clean-shirt guys more interested in stumping for mild civil service reform-a platform whose merit would make for a less stirring campaign song. A bureaucrat should pass a test, hurrah, hurrah!
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  12. Sarah Vowell _ Assassination Vacation

    Jeff Davis's name they'll proudly praise, ah ha, ah ha And Lincoln's tomb will be disgraced, ah ha, ah ha The nation's flag will lose its stars The stripes they'll change to rebel bars And we'll all wear gray if the Johnnies get into power
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