"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.'"
— Sarah Vowell (Take the Cannoli)

"Just the other day, I was in my neighborhood Starbucks, waiting for the post office to open. I was enjoying a chocolately caffe mocha when it occurred to me that to drink a mocha is to gulp down the entire history of the New World.
From the Spanish exportation of Aztec cacao, and the Dutch invention of the chemical process for making cocoa, on down to the capitalist empire of Hershey, PA, and the lifestyle marketing of Seattle's Starbucks, the modern mocha is a bittersweet concoction of imperialism, genocide, invention, and consumerism served with whipped cream on top. "
— Sarah Vowell

""I talk about going to [George W. Bush's] Inauguration and crying
when he took the oath, 'cause I was so afraid he was going to
'wreck the economy and muck up the drinking water'... the failure of
my pessimistic imagination at that moment boggles my mind now.""
— Sarah Vowell