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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.

-Garrison Keillor

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The Father Of A

Garrison Keillor

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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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

One Day Donald Trump Will Discover That He Is Owned By Lutheran Brotherhood And Must Re Negotiate His Debt Load With A Committee Of Silent Norwegians Who Dont Understand Why Anyone Would Pay More Than $120.00 For A Suit.

He Was Admired For Never Being At A Loss For Words And Never Wasting Any Either.

A Loss For Words

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

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.

A Romp In The Hay Lingers Like The First Line Of A Song, But Your True Love Is The One You Make A Life With And Write More Than A Line About, You Write A Whole Book.

It's Better To Be Burnished With Use Than Rusty With Principle.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

We All Know You Can Get Aids From Sex, But Did You Know That You Can Get Sex From Aides?

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

I Hear A Little Firecracker Go Off When You Come Up With A Good Rhyme.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bravery And Adventure! That's The Ticket! Don't Sit And Gather Moss. Get Up, Get Out, Do What You Dream Of Doing, And If It Doesn't Work, It Doesn't Work, And You Don't Need To Made That Particular Mistake Again, But At Least You Won't Get Old Wondering What If You Had.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Finding Yourself

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

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

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.

It Was Luxuries Like Air Conditioning That Brought Down The Roman Empire. With Air Conditioning Their Windows Were Shut, They Couldn't Hear The Barbarians Coming.

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.

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

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.

Nothing You Do For Children Is Ever Wasted.

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

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.

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.

I've Seen The Truth, And It Makes No Sense.

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

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.

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

For Me, The Monologue Was The Favorite Thing I Had Done In Radio. It Was Based On Writing, But In The End It Was Radio, It Was Standing Up And Leaning Forward Into The Dark And Talking, Letting Words Come Out Of You.

One Reads Books In Order To Gain The Privilege Of Living More Than One Life. People Who Don't Read Are Trapped In A Mine Shaft, Even If They Think The Sun Is Shining.

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

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

It?s A Beautiful Descent In A 737, Into The Bitterroot Valley, Following The Clark Fork River, On A Perfect Golden Autumn Day .

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.

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.

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.

You're Such A Big Liar You Gotta Get Your Neighbor To Call Your Dog.

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

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.

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

Humor Is Not A Trick, Not Jokes. Humor Is A Presence In The World - Like Grace - And Shines On Everybody.

Give Up Your Good 'christian' Life And Follow Jesus

Welcome To Lake Wobegon, Where All The Women Are Strong, All The Men Are Good-looking, And All The Children Are Above Average.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Thank You, God, For This Good Life And Forgive Us If We Do Not Love It Enough.

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.

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.

We Live A Pleasant Life Shopping At The Food Shoppe . . . Taking The Kids To The Weinery-beanery, . . . And Eating Bran Flakes . .. And Then, With No Warning, We Wake Up One Morning Stricken With Middle Age, Full Of Loneliness, Dumb, In Pain. Our Work Is Useless, Our Vocation Is Lost, And Nobody Cares About Us At All. This Is Not Bearable. In Despair, We Go Do Something Spectacularly Dumb, Like Run Away With Amber The Cocktail Waitress, And Suddenly All The Women In Our Life Look At Us With Unmitigated Disgust.

When You Come To Expect Humor Of People, You Will Never Get It.

Forget What You Learned About Poetry In School. (that It's Complex, Opaque, A Problem To Be Solved In 1500 Words By Tomorrow.) Poetry Is The Last Preserve Of Honest Speech And The Outspoken Heart. It Holds The Cadence Of Common Life. It Has A Passion For Truth And Justice And Liberty; It Is A Buoy To People In Ordinary Trouble: To A Friend Whose Life Has Gone Skidding Into The Meridian, Who Has Been Struck By Bad News, Who Is Frying Eggs And Hash Browns And Has Whiny Child Clinging To His Pant Leg.

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

If You Lived Today As If It Were Your Last, You'd Buy Up A Box Of Rockets And Fire Them All Off, Wouldn't 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.

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.

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

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

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 Felt Bad For That World That We Have Given A Generation Of Kids.

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.

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

Minnesota Is A State Of Public-spirited And Polite People, Where You Can Get A Good Cappucino And Eat Thai Food And Find Any Book You Want And Yet Live On A Quiet Tree-lined Street With A Backyard And Send Your Kids To Public School. When A State This Good Hits The Jackpot, It Can Only Be An Inspiration To Everybody.

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

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

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

A Cruise Ship Is A Floating Town Of Lazy People.

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

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

Some Of Us Have A Relentless Urge To Attempt What We Can Never Be Good At And Neglect Our True Calling.

When In Doubt, Look Intelligent.

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

I Want To Resume The Life Of A Shy Person.

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

Being An English Major Prepares You For Impersonating Authority.

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

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.

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

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.

... 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.

Cleverness Is A Burden After That. You Are Supposed To Settle Down And Be A Good Person, Raise Your Children, And Be Good To Your Friends, Which You May Not Have Been Back When You Were Clever.

In Lake Wobegon, We Don't Forget Mistakes.

Most Men Are Prisoners At Best, Who Some Strong Habit Every Drag About Like Chain And Ball.

Childhood Is The Small Town Everyone Came From.

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.

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.

I Grew Up In A Fundamentalist Protestant Family That Stressed That We Were A Select People And So We Were To Avoid Contact With Others Who Did Not Share Our Faith.

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.

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

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.

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

The Audience Is Invisible And That's Good. Somewhere My Voice Is Drifting Through A Swine Barn And The Sound Of It Seems To Perk Up The Sows' Appetite. Or A Lady Is Listening On Headphones As She Jogs Along A Beach, Running To My Cadence. Or A Dog Sits In Front Of The Radio, Head Cocked, And The Sibilants Excite Him In Some Mysterious Way. A Dog's Humorist, That's Me.

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

Take Care Of Your Friends. Because There Will Come A Time When You'll Be No Good To Anyone, And The Only Reason For People To Talk To You Will Be Sheer Habit.

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

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.

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

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.

Being Rich And Thin Isn't Everything.

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.

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.

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

Second Violins Can Play A Concerto Perfectly If They're In Their Own Home And Nobody's There.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Give Guilt - The Gift That Lasts Forever.

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

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.

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.

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.

We'd All Be Alot Happier If We'd Stop Assuming We're Supposed To Be Happy.

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.

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

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.

Marriage, Friends, Is A Lifelong Feast; Love Is No Light Lunch.

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.

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.

The Problem With Paradise Is That It's Temporary: You Don't Belong Here And The Neighbors Are Nobody You Care To Know, So It's Only Blissful For A Week Or So.

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

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

The Greatness Of America Is That It Produces Exuberant Geniuses Like Louis Armstrong And Fred Astaire And Leonard Bernstein. We Are Meant To Be A Jazzy People Who Talk Big And Jump On The Table And Dance; We Aren't Supposed To Be Dopey And Glum And Brood Over Old Injuries.

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

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

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.

I Think There's A Lot Of Power In Listening To One Person Talking To You. And This Should Never Be Underestimated.one Person Sitting And Talking To You And, You're Pulled In, In Ways That Technology And Art And All Cannot.

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

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.

In The End, All Solutions Are Temporary.

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.

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.

Vacation Cruises Are Advertised As Luxurious Journeys To Exotic Places, But A Chief Pleasure Is The Reading Of Books ... . On Steamer Chairs Topside Or Poolside, In The Lounges, Everywhere You See Men And Women With Their Noses In Books, Devouring Them For Hours.

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.

Humor, A Good Sense Of It, Is To Americans What Manhood Is To Spaniards And We Will Go To Great Lengths To Prove It.

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.

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

No Innocent Man Buys A Gun, And No Happy Man Writes His Memoirs.

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.

I Like To Sing And It's Just Really Fun To Sing, And I Don't Get Too Much. And At My House I'm Not Allowed To Because, You Know, Your Children Can't Stand It When You Sing At Home.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

I Think If The Church Put In Half The Time On Covetousness That It Does On Lust, This Would Be A Better World For All Of Us.

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

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

I Was Afraid You Had Deceased,' He Said. 'or Gotten Engrossed In A Long Book.

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.

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.

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

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

We Carry Adolescence Around In Our Bodies All Our Lives. We Get Through The Car Crash Age Alive And Cruise Through Our Early Twenties As Cool Dudes, Wily, Dashing, Winsome . . . Shooting Baskets, The Breeze, The Moon, And Then We Try To Become Caring Men, Good Husbands, Great Fathers, Good Citizens.

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.

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

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.

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?

I Was Brought Up Imagining That Cream Rises To The Top, Merit Wins Out, The Race Is To The Swift And Riches To Men Of Understanding, But It Ain't Necessarily So. The Swift Stand A Better Chance If They Are Also Beautiful.

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

There Was A Price To Be Paid For Being Interested In Fiction And In Writing, Pushing My Family Away. Books And Authors Became My Family.

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

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Mary McLeod Bethune

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