Garrison Keillor Quotes

Where I come from, when a Catholic marries a Lutheran it is considered the first step on the road to Minneapolis.

Don't tear up the page and start over again when you write a bad line-try to write your way out of it. Make mistakes and plunge on. Writing is a means of discovery, always.

Sometimes you have to look reality in the eye, and deny it.

Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have.

I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it.

A young writer is easily tempted by the allusive and ethereal and ironic and reflective, but the declarative is at the bottom of most good writing.

My ability to keep cool in a crisis is based entirely on not knowing all the facts.

Pumpkin pie is a living symbol of mediocrity. The best pumpkin pie you ever ate wasn't all that much different from the worst pumpkin pie you ever ate.

When it comes to finding available men in Minnesota, the odds are good, but the goods are odd.

That's why God created marriage, so people wouldn't have to fight with strangers.

An interesting thing about New York City is that the subways run through the sewers.

When you're a little kid, your heart is open and tender and a harsh word can go straight in and become part of your life.

He was admired for never being at a loss for words and never wasting any either.

March is the month God created to show people who don't drink what a hangover is like.

Marriage, friends, is a lifelong feast; love is no light lunch.

Don't pour the oil directly into my navel, pour it on my sternum and let it run down into my navel, you ignorant peasant.

The mass of men lead lives of shallow happiness; the superior man exults in his gloom.

I want to resume the life of a shy person.

English is the perfect language for preachers because it allows you to talk until you think of what to say.

A cruise ship is a floating town of lazy people.

As for kissing on the first date, you should never date someone whom you would not wish to kiss immediately.

Ha! Easy for nuns to talk about giving up things. That's what they do for a living.

There's no mastery to be had. You love the attempt. You don't master a story any more than you master a river. You feel lucky to canoe down it.

Being Lutheran, Mother believed that self-pity is a deadly sin and so is nostalgia, and she had no time for either

The funniest line in English is 'Get it?' When you say that, everyone chortles.

Most men are prisoners at best, Who some strong habit every drag about Like chain and ball.

If the marriage needs help, the answer almost always is have more fun. Drop your list of grievances and go ride a roller coaster.

You've got work to do. Don't put this off. And don't take the long view, here. You know? Life is today and tomorrow and - and if you're lucky, next week.

Boys, the first drink is a boon, the second is a gamble, the third is poor judgment, and then the rate of descent gets steep

I hear a little firecracker go off when you come up with a good rhyme.

Humor, a good sense of it, is to Americans what manhood is to Spaniards and we will go to great lengths to prove it.

People always are encouraging about a terrible loss, so that sometimes the loser would like to strangle them.

God is a great humorist. He just has a slow audience to work with.

Liberalism is dead, so dead that Democrats have all become moderate Republicans, and the heavy hand of Big Government is now limp and damp and trembly.

...opening up a newspaper is the key to looking classy and smart. Never mind the bronze-plated stuff about the role of the press in a democracy - a newspaper, kiddo, is about Style.

A man can't eat anger for breakfast and sleep with it at night and not suffer damage to his soul.

The French have a new president, the British will soon have a new P.M., and we envy them as we endure the endless wait for this small dim man to go back to Texas and resume his life.

It is a sin to believe evil of others but it is seldom a mistake.

I'm not busy... a woman with three children under the age of 10 wouldn't think my schedule looked so busy.

We'd all be alot happier if we'd stop assuming we're supposed to be happy.

TV news is as bloody as Shakespeare but without the intelligence and the poetry. If you watch television news you know less about the world than if you drank gin out of a bottle

Life is continuous. Life never stops. We come to the really great questions and before we can answer them, life has moved on to something else.

A compassionate conservative is someone who electrocutes juveniles but lets them have a last 'make a wish'.

God plays a lot of jokes on us to get our attention.

You don't have to justify a beautiful stroke of good luck. Accept it. Smile and say thank you.

I talk in subjects and verbs, and sort of wind around in concentric circles until I get far enough away from the beginning so that I can call it the end, and it ends.

I was afraid you had deceased,' he said. 'Or gotten engrossed in a long book.

I have taken so many wrong turns and been so careless with precious things and managed to lose, or break, or leave out in the rain so much that I loved.

It's important for survival that children have their own experiences, the kind they learn from. The kind their parents arrange for are not as useful. Good parents are the hardest to get rid of.

A good newspaper is never nearly good enough but a lousy newspaper is a joy forever.