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• I talk about going to his 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.
  • Referring to George W. Bush on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (2006-02-21)

Take the Cannoli (2000)

Take the Cannoli : Stories from the New World Simon & Schuster, 2000, ISBN 0-684-86797-4

• ...the huge Jackson Pollock canvas that is the U.S.A.: vast, murky, splotched and slapped together by a drunk.

• Frank Sinatra is the first punk... punk comes out of nowhere... punk is... a rumor that spreads... that guts and perseverence mean more than anything else...

• ...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.'
  • On the Godfather and family

The Partly Cloudy Patriot (2003)

• 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.

• I was enjoying a chocolatey café mocha when it occurred to me that to drink a mocha is to gulp down the entire history of the New World. ...the modern mocha is a bittersweet concoction of imperialism, genocide, invention, and consumerism served with whipped cream on top. No wonder it costs so much.

Assassination Vacation (2005)

Simon & Schuster, 2005, ISBN 0-7432-6003-1

• I understand why other people would want to stay in B&Bs. They're pretty. They're personal. They're “quaint,” a polite way of saying “no TV.” They are “romantic,” i.e., every object large enough for a flower to be printed on it is going to have a flower printed on it. They're “cozy,” meaning that a guest has to keep her belongings on the floor because every conceivable flat surface is covered in knickknacks, except for the one knickknack she longs for, a remote control.
  • p. 2

• Going to Ford's Theatre to watch the play is like going to Hooters for the food.
  • p. 21

• Nowadays, ever since the attack on the Pentagon in 2001, the capital has been clamped down. How is this manifested? Giant planters blocking government buildings, giant planters barricading every other street. Theoretically, the concrete flowerpots are solid enough to fend off a truck bomb. And yet the effect is ridiculous, as if we believe we can protect ourselves from suicide bombers by hiding behind blooming pots of marigolds, flowers whose main defensive property is repelling rabbits.
  • pp. 23-24

• I haven't decided if he deserved to eat bread made out of sticks or live in a rancid puddle, probably because I haven't made up my mind whether anyone deserves such treatment, though I suspect that the day a person gives up on the Geneva Conventions is the day a person gives up on the human race.
  • p. 81

• I fear that the consumer who buys a Confederate flag coffee cup, which she will then put on her American flag place mat, is the sort of sophisticated thinker who is open-minded enough that she is capable of hating blacks and Arabs at the same time.
  • p. 88

• You know you've reached a new plateau of group mediocrity when even a Canadian is alarmed by your lack of individuality.
  • p. 144

• 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.
  • p. 208