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Humor Is Not About Problems With Airline Luggage Handlers. It's About Our Lives In America And It's About The Ends Of Our Lives And It's About Everything That Happens After That And Everything That Happened Before.

-Garrison Keillor

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Humor Is Not About

Garrison Keillor

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Humor Is Not About Problems With Airline Luggage Handlers. It's About Our Lives In America And It's About The Ends Of Our Lives And It's About Everything That Happens After That And Everything That Happened Before.

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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.

Evelyn Was An Insomniac So When They Say She Died In Her Sleep, You Have To Question That.

Don't Worry About The Past And Don't Try To Solve The Future.

A Man Can't Eat Anger For Breakfast And Sleep With It At Night And Not Suffer Damage To His Soul.

In Lake Wobegon, We Don't Forget Mistakes.

When You Wage War On The Public Schools, You're Attacking The Mortar That Holds The Community Together. You're Not A Conservative, You're A Vandal.

I Usually Don't Work With Other People; I Do The Whole Show Myself.

Humor Needs To Come In Under Cover Of Darkness, In Disguise, And Surprise People.

We Come From People Who Brought Us Up To Believe That Life Is A Struggle, And If You Should Feel Really Happy, Be Patient: This Will Pass.

This Is The Big Reason Most Humorists Fail. Drunks Don't Read Books.

Humor Is Not About Problems With Airline Luggage Handlers. It's About Our Lives In America And It's About The Ends Of Our Lives And It's About Everything That Happens After That And Everything That Happened Before.

I Write For A Radio Show That, No Matter What, Will Go On The Air Saturday At Five O'clock Central Time. You Learn To Write Toward That Deadline, To Let The Adrenaline Pick You Up On Friday Morning And Carry You Through, To Cook Up A Monologue About Lake Wobegon And Get To The Theater On Time.

Every Show Is Your Last Show. That's My Philosophy.

Being An English Major Prepares You For Impersonating Authority.

I Am A Cheerful Man, Even In The Dark, And It's All Thanks To A Good Lutheran Mother. . . . Mother Was Well Composed, A True Lutheran, And Taught Me To Cheer Up, Make Yourself Useful, Mind Your Manners, And Above All, Don't Feel Sorry For Yourself.

Some Luck Lies In Not Getting What You Thought You Wanted But Getting What You Have, Which Once You Have Got It You May Be Smart Enough To See Is What You Would Have Wanted Had You Known.

Children Can Find Other Children To Be Pals. Children Need Fathers To Be Fathers.

Ralph Stanley Is Like An Uncle To Us And Now That All My Uncles Are Gone, Ralph's Singing Is Even More Precious. This Album Of Classic Folk Songs Is One Of His Best.

Travel Is The Art Form Available To Everyman. You Sit In The Coffee Shop In A Strange City And Nobody Knows Who You Are, Or Cares, And So You Shed Your Checkered Past And Your Motley Credentials And You Face The Day Unarmed ... And Onward We Go And Some Day In The Distant Future, We Will Stop And Turn Around In Astonishment To See All The Places We've Been And The Heroes We Were.

A Lovely Thing About Christmas Is That It's Compulsory, Like A Thunderstorm, And We All Go Through It Together.

Easter Is So Disappointing. You Suffer All The Way Through Lent, And What Do You Get For It? A Ham.

Sometimes You Have To Look Reality In The Eye, And Deny It.

The Majority Of People Who Keel Over Dead At Concerts Are Killed By A Long Trumpet Passage.

Lake Wobegon, The Little Town That Time Forgot And The Decades Cannot Improve.

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.

I Think The Most Un-american Thing You Can Say Is, 'you Can't Say That.'

Have Interesting Failures.... If You Need To Have A Personal Crisis Have It Now. Don't Wait Until Midlife, When It Will Take Longer To Resolve.... Don't Pity Yourselves. Lighten Up. Seek People With A Sense Of Humor. Avoid Humorless People-and Do Not Marry One, For God's Sake.

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.

As A Former English Major, I Am A Sitting Duck For Gift Books, And In The Past Few Years I've Gotten Dickens, Thackeray, Smollet, Richardson, Emerson, Keats, Boswell And The Brontes, All Of Them Great, None Of Them Ever Read By Me, All Of Them Now On A Shelf, Looking At Me And Making Me Feel Guilty.

Sometimes You Have To Avoid Mentioning Things Because People's Feelings Are Tender.

The Highlight Of My Childhood Was Making My Brother Laugh So Hard That Food Came Out Of His Nose.

Years Ago, Manhood Was An Opportunity For Achievement, And Now It Is A Problem To Be Overcome.

I'm Not Busy... A Woman With Three Children Under The Age Of 10 Wouldn't Think My Schedule Looked So Busy.

The Party Of Lincoln And Liberty Was Transmogrified Into The Party Of Hairy-backed Swamp Developers And Corporate Shills, Faith-based Economists, Fundamentalist Bullies With Bibles, Christians Of Convenience, Freelance Racists, Misanthropic Frat Boys, Shrieking Midgets Of Am Radio, Tax Cheats, Nihilists In Golf Pants, Brownshirts In Pinstripes, Sweatshop Tycoons. ... Republicans: The No. 1 Reason The Rest Of The World Thinks We're Deaf, Dumb, And Dangerous.

God Writes A Lot Of Comedy... The Trouble Is, He's Stuck With So Many Bad Actors Who Don't Know How To Play Funny.

In The End, All Solutions Are Temporary.

To Norwegians, The Polka Is A Form Of Martial Art.

You Learn This Great Lesson Of Life: It's Not About Me. It's Just Not. The Matter Of Talent-which Seemed So Important To You When You Were Young-is Not Of Great Importance. We're Simply A Conduit. We Take Things Out Of The Air Into Us And Put Them In The Form Of Stories. That's Pretty Much It.

A Child Can Educate Just About Anybody.

I Loved Feeling Special. I Hated Feeling Special.

Growing Up In A Place That Has Winter, You Learn To Avoid Self-pity. Winter Is Not A Personal Experience, Everybody Else Is Just As Cold As You, So You Shouldn't Complain About It Too Much. You Learn This As A Kid, Coming Home Crying From The Cold, And Mother Looks Down And Says, 'it's Only A Little Frostbite. You're Okay.' And Thus You Learn To Be Okay. What's Done Is Done. Get Over It. Drink Your Coffee. It's Not The Best You'll Ever Get But It's Good Enough.

Ha! Easy For Nuns To Talk About Giving Up Things. That's What They Do For A Living.

Thank You, Dear God, For This Good Life And Forgive Us If We Do Not Love It Enough. Thank You For The Rain. And For The Chance To Wake Up In Three Hours And Go Fishing: I Thank You For That Now, Because I Won't Feel So Thankful Then.

Powdermilk Biscuits: Heavens, Theyre Tasty And Expeditious! Theyre Made From Whole Wheat, To Give Shy Persons The Strength To Get Up And Do What Needs To Be Done

People In Cars Cause Accidents And Accidents In Cars Cause People.

A Compassionate Conservative Is Someone Who Electrocutes Juveniles But Lets Them Have A Last 'make A Wish'.

Sing Your Song; Don't Let The Bastards Get You Down.

Adolescence Hits Boys Harder Than It Does Girls. Girls Bleed A Little And Their Breasts Pop Out, Big Deal, But Adolescence Lands On A Guy With Both Feet. . . . Your Body Is Engulfed By Chemicals Of Rage And Despair, You Pound, You Shriek, You Batter Your Head Against The Trees. You Come Away Wounded, Feeling That Life Is Unknowable, Can Never Be Understood, Only Endured And Sometimes Cheated.

Be Well, Do Good Work, And Keep In Touch.

... I Never Was One To Get Upset About A Few Scratches On A Motor Vehicle, It Is Meant To Be Used, Not Saved.

Nothing You Do For Children Is Ever Wasted.

A Person Cannot Coast Along In Old Destructive Habits Year After Year And Accept Whatever Comes Along. A Person Must Stand Up On Her Own Two Legs And Walk. Get Off The Bus And Go Get On Another. Climb Out Of The Ditch And Cross The Road. Find The Road That S Where You Want To Go. ... The Only Sermon That Counts Is The One That Is Formed By Our Actions. She Would Quit Drinking And Thereby Show Kyle Life Is What You Make It. A Person Can Grab Hold Of Her Life And Change Things For The Better. This Happens All The Time. We Are Not Chips Of Wood Drifting Down The Stream Of Time. We Have Oars.

A Good Friend Is A Person Who Thinks You're One Of The Good Eggs, Even If He Knows You're A Little Cracked.

I Think That You Are Only Obliged To Be A Humorist From The Age Of 18 Until You Turn 30. Past The Age Of 30 I Don't Think There Is Any Obligation To Be Clever At All.

America Of The Future Will Be All Malls Connected By Interstates. All Because Your Parents No Longer Can Their Own Tomatoes.

I Was An English Major At The University Of Minnesota, And I Was Very Shy, Which Many People Misinterpreted As Intelligence. On The Basis Of That Wrong Impression, I Became The Editor Of The Campus Literary Magazine.

The Reason To Retire Is To Try To Avoid Embarrassment; You Ought To Do It Before People Are Dropping Big Hints. You Want To Be The First To Come Up With The Idea. You Don't Want To Wait Until You Trip And Fall Off The Stage.

When It Comes To Finding Available Men In Minnesota, The Odds Are Good, But The Goods Are Odd.

Sex Is Not A Mechanical Act That Fails For Lack Of Technique, And It Is Not A Performance By The Male For The Audience Of The Female; It Is A Continuum Of Attraction That Extends From The Simplest Conversation And The Most Innocent Touching Through The Act Of Coitus.

Honesty Is A Rare Commodity In A Palace, And That Is Why So Many Fairy-tale Marriages End Up On The Rocks.

A Person Does Feel Sheepish Picking On Journalists, A Class Already So Richly Despised That If A Planeload Of Them Crashed In Flames, Most People Would Smile From Pure Reflex.

Wal-mart Is Going In And Slaughtering [small Towns] Just As We Once Killed The Buffalo.

Bad Things Don't Happen To Writers; It's All Material.

Some Luck Lies In Not Getting What You Thought You Wanted But Getting What You Have.

Spending Time In A Church Does Not Make You Religious, Any More Than Spending Time In A Garage Makes You A Car.

Even In A Time Of Elephantine Vanity And Greed, One Never Has To Look Far To See The Campfires Of Gentle People.

When The Country Goes Temporarily To The Dogs, Cats Must Learn To Be Circumspect, Walk On Fences, Sleep In Trees, And Have Faith That All This Woofing Is Not The Last Word.

I Thought A Prairie Home Companion Would Be An Interesting Thing To Do For A Summer Or So. Public Radio Was Just Seven Years Old In 1974. It Was A Tiny Organization In Which A Lot Of Things Got Started Simply Because There Was All This Time To Fill. If You Wanted To Do An Hour On Lithuanian Folk Dancing, You Probably Could Have Done It.

Humor, A Good Sense Of It, Is To Americans What Manhood Is To Spaniards, And We Will Go To Great Lengths To Prove It. Experiments With Laboratory Rats Have Shown That, If One Psychologist In The Room Laughs At Something A Rat Does, All Of The Other Psychologists Will Laugh Equally. Nobody Wants To Be Left Holding The Joke.

I Feel It's So Hard For Young Actors; It's A Different World That They're Coming Up In; There's So Much Money To Be Made Off Of Their Personal Lives, And People Are Bound And Determined To Make That Money.

All Fiction Comes From A Little Bit Of Reality, Otherwise It Would Have No Relevance. The Fun Is In Innovation, Take Something Real Like This Fair, And Make It Something Larger Than Life.

English Is The Perfect Language For Preachers Because It Allows You To Talk Until You Think Of What To Say.

All Solutions Are Temporary, So Why Not Go For Duct Tape?

Those People On Daytime Tv Talking About How Their Parents Never Gave Them The Positive Feedback They Needed And That's Why They Shot Them- Those Are Not Minnesotans.

The Thought Of People In This Day And Age Sitting Down To Listen To A Radio Variety Show On Saturday Evening Is Rather Implausible And Was Even More So In 1974 When We Started “a Prairie Home Companion.” Thank Goodness Minnesota Public Radio Was Too Poor To Afford Good Advice Or The Show Never Would've Got On The Air. We Only Did It Because We Knew It Would Be Fun To Do. It Was A Dumb Idea. I Wish I Knew How To Be That Dumb Again.

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.

It Is More Worthy In The Eyes Of God . . . If A Writer Makes Three Pages Sharp And Funny About The Lives Of Geese Than To Make Three Hundred Fat And Flabby About God Or The American People.

I Can Write Anywhere. I Write In Airports. I Write On Airplanes. I've Written In The Back Seats Of Taxis. I Write In Hotel Rooms. I Love Hotel Rooms. I Just Write Wherever I Am Whenever I Need To Write.

That's What I Am, Frank Thought, An Ordinary Genius. He Had Unlocked The Secret Of Radio. The Sport Of The Ordinary! Brillliant Me Like Reed Seymour Couldn't Figure This Out For The Life Of Them! Reed Was Ashamed Of Radio. ...radio Was A Cinch If You Kept Reaching Down And Grabbing Up Handfuls Of The Ordinary.

Marrying For Sex Is Like Flying To London For The Free Peanuts And Pretzels. It's Not The Point Of The Thing, Is It?

We Thank You [the Soldiers Recently Returned From The Middle East] For Your Service.

It's A Shallow Life That Doesn't Give A Person A Few Scars.

I Love Rhymes; I Love To Write A Poem About New York And Rhyme 'oysters' With 'the Cloisters.' And 'the Lady From Knoxville Who Bought Her Brassieres By The Boxful.' I Just Feel A Sort Of Small Triumph.

My Ability To Keep Cool In A Crisis Is Based Entirely On Not Knowing All The Facts.

You Can Go Your Whole Life And Not Need Math Or Physics For A Minute, But The Ability To Tell A Joke Is Always Handy.

I've Wanted To Be A Writer Since I Was A Boy, Though It Seemed An Unlikely Outcome Since I Showed No Real Talent. But I Persevered And Eventually Found My Own Row To Hoe. Ignorance Of Other Writers' Work Keeps Me From Discouragement And I Am Less Well-read Than The Average Bus Driver.

To The Cheater, There Is No Such Thing As Honesty, And To Republicans The Idea Of Serving The Public Good Is Counterfeit On The Face Of It They Never Felt Such An Urge, And Therefore It Must Not Exist.

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.

Librarians, Dusty, Possess A Vast Store Of Politeness. These Are People Who Get Asked Regularly The Dumbest Questions On God's Green Earth. These People Tolerate Every Kind Of Crank And Eccentric And Mouth Breather There Is.

A Girl In A Bikini Is Like Having A Loaded Pistol On Your Coffee Table - There's Nothing Wrong With Them, But It's Hard To Stop Thinking About It.

I'm Of An Age When If I Started To Do Eulogies, I'd Be Doing Nothing Else. You Don't Want To Be Remembered? I Don't Want Them To Be Told To Remember Me.

What Keeps Faith Cheerful Is The Extreme Persistence Of Gentleness And Humor. Gentleness Is Everywhere In Daily Life, A Sign That Faith Rules Through Ordinary Things: Through Cooking And Small Talk, Through Storytelling, Making Love, Fishing, Tending Animals And Sweet Corn And Flowers, Through Sports, Music, And Books, Raising Kids-all The Places Where The Gravy Soaks In And Grace Shines Through. Even In A Time Of Elephantine Vanity And Greed, One Never Has To Look Far To See The Campfires Of Gentle People. Lacking Any Other Purpose In Life, It Would Be Good Enough To Live For Their Sake.

Eating A Little Was Like Vomiting A Little, Just As Bad As A Lot.

Nothing You Do For Children Is Ever Wasted. They Seem Not To Notice Us, Hovering, Averting Our Eyes, And They Seldom Offer Thanks, But What We Do For Them Is Never Wasted.

I Don't Have A Great Eye For Detail. I Leave Blanks In All Of My Stories. I Leave Out All Detail, Which Leaves The Reader To Fill In Something Better.

Some People Think It Is Difficult To Be A Christian And To Laugh, But I Think It's The Other Way Around. God Writes A Lot Of Comedy, Its Just That He Has So Many Bad Actors.

... Life Itself Is Brief, And That Is What Charges The Day With Such Ridiculous Beauty.

Secret Of Life Is To Go Through Something Harrowing That Doesnt Kill You...and To Love One Woman For The Rest Of Your Life.

Rest Of Your Life

If The Marriage Needs Help, The Answer Almost Always Is Have More Fun. Drop Your List Of Grievances And Go Ride A Roller Coaster.

Cats Are Intended To Teach Us That Not Everything In Nature Has A Function.

..people (in Minnesota) Avoid Stupidity When Possible, Not Wanting To Be A $10 Haircut On A 50 Cent Head.

Childhood Is The Small Town Everyone Came From.

An Interesting Thing About New York City Is That The Subways Run Through The Sewers.

I Remember When I Switched From Christmas To Sex As The Secret Of Happiness.

Winter: It's Not Just A Season, It's Who We Are.

She Gave Him Such A Look... Man Oh Man, If Looks Could Kill. That One Might Have Totalled A City Block.

As For Family Values, They Are Whatever They Are - Some Families Are Tight, Others Are Blown Away Like Dandelion Puffs. A Main Value In Minnesota Is Still: Don't Waste My Time, Don't B.s. Me, I Wasn't Born Yesterday.

Why Is Divorce So Expensive? Because It's Worth It!

Vodka Is Tasteless Going Down, But It Is Memorable Coming Up.

Just Because We're Fictional Characters Doesn't Mean You Can Pick Us Up And Move Us Anywhere You Want.--the People Of Lake Woebegon

Enough. Man Is Capable Of Reform Once Presented With The Facts, And The Fact Is That Bottling Water And Shipping It Is A Big Waste Of Fuel, So Stop Already.

Roy Blount's Stuff Makes Me Laugh So Hard, Sometimes I Have To Go Sit In A Room And Shut The Door

Age Doesn't Always Bring Wisdom. Sometimes Age Comes Alone.

Give Guilt - The Gift That Lasts Forever.

I Want To Resume The Life Of A Shy Person.

Humor Has To Surprise Us; Otherwise, It Isn't Funny. It's A Death Knell For A Writer To Be Labeled A Humorist Because Then It's Not A Surprise Anymore.

This Is Democratic Bedrock: We Don't Let People Lie In The Ditch And Drive Past And Pretend Not To See Them Dying. Here On The Frozen Tundra Of Minnesota, If Your Neighbor's Car Won't Start, You Put On Your Parka And Get The Jumper Cables Out And Deliver The Sacred Spark That Starts Their Car. Everybody Knows This. The Logical Extension Of This Spirit Is Social Welfare And The Myriad Government Programs With Long Dry Names All Very Uninteresting To You Until You Suddenly Need One.

Scripture Doesn't Promise That God Will Remove Temptation, Only That You'll Be Given Strength To Withstand It.

A Book Is A Gift You Can Open Again And Again.

When You're In Your 20s, Your 30s, Even, You Have - At Least, I Had - Vast Ambitions, And You Sit Around Mooning About These Things, And You're Depressed, Because You Haven't Done Them. And It Takes You A Long Time To Come To The Realization That If You Can't Be John Updike, Well, Then, You Can't.

It Was A Pleasure To Have Somebody Else Be The Boss. It Wouldn't Have Been Nearly As Much Fun Any Other Way. He's Been Around And Made A Lot Of Movies And He's A Great Straightforward Person To Work For. And It Was A Pleasure To See Other People To Pick Up Characters That You've Sketched Out Loosely On Paper And Make Them Into Something Fascinating.

When Writing Loses Touch With The Beautiful Surface Of The World, It Loses Its Way. You Always Want To Be In Touch With How Things Look And What People Say And What They Call Their Dogs.

God Is A Great Humorist. He Just Has A Slow Audience To Work With.

Selective Ignorance, A Cornerstone Of Child Rearing. You Don't Put Kids Under Surveillance: It Might Frighten You. Parents Should Sit Tall In The Saddle And Look Upon Their Troops With A Noble And Benevolent And Extremely Nearsighted Gaze.

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.

There's So Many People Who Move Around Our Country And Lose Track Of Their Own Ancestry. It's Nice To Know Where You Come From.

Possessing The Ideal Makes A Person Nervous: You Sense The Inevitable Decline Just Ahead.

Love Has The Power To Rescue Us And Not Let Go, Otherwise It Isn't Love

... And People Are To March Around The Church To Commemorate The Event, Palm Sunday, When Jesus Rode Into Jerusalem And Was Greeted With Applause And With Palms. People Thought He Had Come To Overthrow The Romans, But ... No ... He Had Come To Change Them ... And That Led To Things Turning Bad.

Girls . . . Were Allowed To Play In The House . . . And Boys Were Sent Outdoors. . . . Boys Ran Around In The Yard With Toy Guns Going Kksshh-kksshh, Fighting Wars For Made-up Reasons And Arguing About Who Was Dead, While Girls Stayed Inside And Played With Dolls, Creating Complex Family Groups And Learning How To Solve Problems Through Negotiation And Roleplaying. Which Gender Is Better Equipped, On The Whole, To Live An Adult Life, Would You Guess?

I Love New York, And I'm Drawn To A Certain Intensity Of Life, But I've Just Never Felt Like I Want To Escape From The Midwest. A Writer Lives A Great Deal In His Own Head, And So One Intuitively Finds Places Where Your Head Is More Clear. New York For Me Is One Of Those Places.

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

Nothing That Readers Say Or Do Strikes Me As A Nuisance. Anyone Who Cracks Open A Book Of Mine Is, To Me, A Gem.

The Mass Of Men Lead Lives Of Shallow Happiness; The Superior Man Exults In His Gloom.

I Don't Associate Work With Feelings Of Satisfaction. Rather, Guilt, Frustration, And Resentment Of People Who Write Better Than I Do.

We English Majors...need To Promote Public Libraries As A Tool In The War Against Terror. How Many Readers Of Edith Wharton Have Engaged In Terroristic Acts? I Challenge You To Name One...do We Need To Wait Until Our Cities Lie In Smoking Ruins Before We Wake Up To The Fact That A First-class Public Library Is A Vital Link In National Defense?

Intelligence Is Like Four-wheel Drive. It Only Allows You To Get Stuck In More Remote Places.

They Say Such Nice Things About People At Their Funerals That It Makes Me Sad That I'm Going To Miss Mine By Just A Few Days.

In Romance, As In Life, You Only Learn When You're Losing.

People Always Are Encouraging About A Terrible Loss, So That Sometimes The Loser Would Like To Strangle Them.

I Write On A Laptop, So It's Impossible To Count Drafts Anymore.

You Don't Want To Get That Sort Of Sound In Your Writing That Boing That Gives You Away.

Important Book Reading Is A Solitary And Sedentary Pursuit, And Those Who Do Are Cautioned That A Book Should Be Used As An Integral Part Of A Well-rounded Life, Including A Daily Regimen Of Rigorous Physical Exercise, Rewarding Personal Relationships, And Sensible Low-fat Diet. A Book Should Not Be Used A As A Substitute Or An Excuse.

My Generation Was Secretive, Brooding, Ambitious, Show-offy, And This Generation Is Congenial. Totally. I Imagine Them Walking Around With Gps Chips That Notify Them When A Friend Is In The Vicinity, And Their Gpses Guide Them To Each Other In Clipped Electronic Lady Voices And They Sit Down Side By Side In A Coffee Shop And Text-message Each Other While Checking Their E-mail And Hopping And Skipping Around Facebook To See Who Has Posted Pictures Of Their Weekend.

In California Virtually Everyone Has Had Their Teeth Whitened. If They All Smiled At Once, They Would Give Us A Headache.

It Is A Sin To Believe Evil Of Others But It Is Seldom A Mistake.

Anyone Who Thinks Sitting In Church Can Make You A Christian Must Also Think That Sitting In A Garage Can Make You A Car.

A Minister Has To Be Able To Read A Clock. At Noon, It's Time To Go Home And Turn Up The Pot Roast And Get The Peas Out Of The Freezer.

The Socially Redeeming Aspect Of Golf Lies In The Vast Number Of Lawyers And Bankers And Managers Who Play It, And When You Think Of The Damage They Would Do If They Were At The Job Instead, You Can See Why Golf Courses Are A Wise Investment For Any Municipality.

I Hiked Around Town, The Air Sweet And Dry, And Was Sort Of Overwhelmed By The Perfection Of It -- The Old Courthouse, The Train Depot, Mount [jumbo] And Mount Sentinel Rising Up, The Neon Bars, The Funky Festivity Of A College Town .

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 Believe In Looking Reality Straight In The Eye And Denying It.

Never Insult A Writer. You May Find Yourself Immortalized In Ways You May Not Appreciate.

Finding Yourself

My Ancestors Were Puritans From England. They Arrived Here In 1648 In The Hope Of Finding Greater Restrictions Than Were Permissible Under English Law At That Time.

A Good Newspaper Is Never Nearly Good Enough But A Lousy Newspaper Is A Joy Forever.

Give Up Your Good 'christian' Life And Follow Jesus

You Now Have Learned Enough To See That Cats Are Much Like You And Me And Other People Whom We Find Possessed Of Various Types Of Mind. For Some Are Sane And Some Are Mad And Some Are Good And Some Are Bad And Some Are Better, Some Are Worse But All May Be Described In Verse.

I Think That If Writers Are Tempted To Do Other Things, They Ought To Go Do Other Things. They Should Not Write If They Don't Feel Like It. I Say This As A Competitor. I Am Not Interested In Encouraging People Who Are In Competition With Me.

Freedom Doesn't Mean Aimlessness. We Can't Just Sleepwalk Through Life.... Freedom Demands Structure.

People Meet Writers And Are Bowled Over When The Writer Is Friendly To Them And Invites Them To His House For A Glass Of Wine Or To Shoot Up Heroin Or Whatever They Do, And They Talk Their Heads Off, And A Year Later It Comes Out In A Book, And There Follow Years Of Bitter And Fruitless Litigation, And That Is Why You Should Always Keep A Writer At Arm's Length.

You Don't Have To Justify A Beautiful Stroke Of Good Luck. Accept It. Smile And Say Thank You.

When You're Old You Feast On Your Memories, And If You Spend Too Much Time On Exercise, You May Get Old And Not Have Many.

Majestic Doesn't Appeal To Us. We [americans] Like The Grand Canyon Better With Clarence And Arlene Parked In Front Of It, Smiling.

No Matter What Time Of Year I Come Here, People Always Say The Same Thing: Its Not Usually Like This.

Sometimes There Is Nothing You Can Do, And In Those Times, You Must Do Something Anyway.

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

Men Peak At Age Nineteen And Go Downhill.

Your Car, Comfort Though It Be, This Little Den And Dining Room On Wheels, Is A Prison That Deadens Your Senses, And To Feel Wholly Alive You Must Go For A Walk.

We Have Nearly Complete Misunderstanding Between People Of Different Faiths In Lake Wobegon, And That's Probably One Reason Why We Get Along So Very Well. It's When You Are Trying To Convince Another Person To Think The Same Way That You Do That There Is Friction And Trouble Between People. But When You Feel That The Other Person Is Dumber Than Dirt, Too Dumb For Words - Why Waste Your Breath - You Get Along Pretty Well. There's No Bond Between People That's Quite So Strong As When People Each Feel Slightly Superior Towards The Other One.

There Is Almost No Marital Problem That Can't Be Helped Enormously By Taking Off Your Clothes.

To Your Left Is The Marina Where Several Senior Cabinet Officials Keep Luxury Yachts For Weekend Cruises On The Potomac. Some Of These Ships Are Up To 100 Feet In Length; The Presidential Yacht Is Over 200 Feet In Length, And Can Remain Submerged For Up To 3 Weeks.

As For Kissing On The First Date, You Should Never Date Someone Whom You Would Not Wish To Kiss Immediately.

When The New Yorker Turned Down Work, They Turned It Down In Such An Elaborately Gentlemanly Way Making Apologies For Their Own Shortsightedness. Undoubtedly It Was Their Fault But Somehow For Some Reason This Fell Short Of The Remarkably High Standard That You By Your Own Work Have Set For Yourself. They Had A Way Of Rejecting My Work That Made Me Feel Sorry For Them Somehow.

The Father Of A Daughter Is Nothing But A High-class Hostage. A Father Turns A Stony Face To His Sons, Berates Them, Shakes His Antlers, Paws The Ground, Snorts, Runs Them Off Into The Underbrush, But When His Daughter Puts Her Arm Over His Shoulder And Says, 'daddy, I Need To Ask You Something,' He Is A Pat Of Butter In A Hot Frying Pan.

Some People Have A Love Of Their Fellow Man In Their Hearts, And Others Require A Light Anesthetic.

Where I'm From We Don't Trust Paper. Wealth Is What's Here On The Premises. If I Open A Cupboard And See, Say, Thirty Cans Of Tomato Sauce And A Five-pound Bag Of Rice, I Get A Little Thrill Of Well-being - Much More So Than If I Take A Look At The Quarterly Dividend Report From My Mutual Fund.

The Funniest Line In English Is 'get It?' When You Say That, Everyone Chortles.

A Boy Wrote Me Once To Say That He Loved It When The News From Lake Wobegon Came On The Radio Because It Meant That His Parents Stopped Arguing. That Was An Eye-opener For Me. You Work Hard To Polish Your Act And Then You Find Out That It Does People Good In Ways You Couldn't Predict.

Not Everyone Has A Life's Work. Some People Simply Have A Life.

Face It: A Nation That Maintains A 72% Approval Rating On George W. Bush Is A Nation With A Very Loose Grip On Reality.

Approval Rating

We Writers Don't Really Think About Whether What We Write Is Good Or Not. It's Too Much To Worry About. We Just Put The Words Down, Trying To Get Them Right, Operating By Some Inner Sense Of Pitch And Proportion, And From Time To Time, We Stick The Stuff In An Envelope And Ship It To An Editor.

You Get Old And You Realize There Are No Answers, Just Stories.

A Married Guy Is Responsible For Everything, No Matter What. Women, Thanks To Their Having Been Oppressed All These Years, Are Blameless, Free As Birds, And All The Dirt They Do Is The Result Of Premenstrual Syndrome Or Postmenstrual Stress Or Menopause Or Emotional Disempowerment By Their Fathers Or Low Expectations By Their Teachers Or Latent Unspoken Sexual Harassment In The Workplace, Or Some Other Airy Excuse. The Guy Alone Is Responsible For Every Day Of Marriage That Is Less Than Marvelous And Meaningful.

When In Doubt, Look Intelligent.

Beauty Isn't Worth Thinking About; What's Important Is Your Mind. You Don't Want A Fifty-dollar Haircut On A Fifty-cent Head. ~garrison Keillor

The Great Unrequited Love Tears Open Your Heart To The Beauty Of The World, Its Small Rivers And Upland Meadows. It Also Makes You Kinder To The Next Hundred Thousand Persons Who Cross Your Path.

The Relationship Between Truth And A Newspaper Is Like The Relationship Between The Color Green And The Number Seven. Occasionally You Will See The Number Seven Written In Green, But You Learn Not To Expect This.

People Do What They Are Told Not To Do. It Happens Time And Time Again. Here On The Frozen Tundra, It Is Known As The Tongue On The Frozen Pump Handle Principle.

God Plays A Lot Of Jokes On Us To Get Our Attention.

Sport Is A Seductive Metaphor (life As A Game In Which We Gain Victory Through Hard Work, Discipline, And Visualizing Success). But The Older Metaphor Of Farming (life As Hard Labor That Is Subject To Weather And Quirks Of Blind Fate And May Return No Reward Whatsoever And Don't Be Surprised) Is Still In Our Blood.

To Choose Norm Coleman Over Walter Mondale Is Like Going To A Great Steakhouse And Ordering The Tuna Sandwich.

Where I Come From, When A Catholic Marries A Lutheran It Is Considered The First Step On The Road To Minneapolis.

If You Can't Trust A Methodist With Absolute Power To Arrest People And Not Have To Say Why, Then Whom Can You Trust?

That's Why God Created Marriage, So People Wouldn't Have To Fight With Strangers.

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.

Being Lutheran, Mother Believed That Self-pity Is A Deadly Sin And So Is Nostalgia, And She Had No Time For Either

...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.

The Fundamental Religion Of Most Of Mankind Is The Faith That God Has Revealed Himself To Us And Not To The Barbarians. Our Tribe Is The One God Chose And So If We Vanquish The Other Tribes And Rain Fire And Destruction On Them, We're Only Carrying Out God's Will.

Life Is Unjust And This Is What Makes It So Beautiful. Every Day Is A Gift. Be Brave And Take Hold Of It.

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.

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