Vowell makes friends through nerdiness

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 like detective novels or Ulysses S. Grant.

Sarah Vowell, The Partly Cloudy Patriot (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), p. 91