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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.

-Garrison Keillor

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The Great Unrequited Love

Garrison Keillor

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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.

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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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I Don't Want Them To Be Told To Remember Me.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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?

Childhood Is The Small Town Everyone Came From.

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

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?

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.

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 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

...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.

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

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.

Being Rich And Thin Isn't Everything.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

A Child Can Educate Just About Anybody.

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Give Guilt - The Gift That Lasts Forever.

You'd Learn More About The World By Lying On The Couch And Drinking Gin Out Of A Bottle Than By Watching The News.

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.

Being An English Major Prepares You For Impersonating Authority.

I Want To Resume The Life Of A Shy Person.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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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.

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.

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

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

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

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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.

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

... 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.

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

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.

Your Life Is A Work Of Art, And In The End, The Underlying Theme Of Great Art Is Bravery And Hope And Love.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

It's Confidence; It Has To Be Something Good About Getting Old. One Of The Things Is That You Just Don't Stress About Some Stuff That Made You So Worried.

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

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

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

We Are Great Mysteries. No Matter What We Imagine We May Know, Even For All The Facts We Might Gather, We Don't Know Each Other. Never Do, Probably Never Will. Our Reputations Depend On The Opinions Of The Ill Informed. We All Have Better Moments Than Anybody Ever Knows, And So Do All The Others. We Are, Each One Of Us, Books That Are Read By Critics Who Only Glanced At The Chapter Headings And The Jacket Flap. Each One Of Us Is A Secret, And On That Basis We Ought To Treat Each Other With The Deepest Respect.

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

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

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 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.

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

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.

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.

Writing Is The Main Gig And Teaching And Performing Are Sidelines, An Excuse For Not Writing More. Working On A Novel And On An Opera Make Me Seriously Want To Retire And Find A Volunteer Job As A Docent At The Zoo Explaining To Schoolchildren Where Frogs Go In The Winter.

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.

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

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

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.

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

March Is The Month God Created To Show People Who Don't Drink What A Hangover Is Like.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Give Up Your Good 'christian' Life And Follow Jesus

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.

In The End, All Solutions Are Temporary.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Before The World Was Made, When It Was Only Darkness And Mist And Waters, God Was Well Aware Of Lake Wobegon, My Family, Our House, And He Had Me All Sketched Out Down To What Size My Feet Would Be (big), Which Bike I Would Ride (schwinn), And The Five Ears Of Corn I'd Eat For Supper That Night.

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

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.

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.

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

Jesus Said The Meek Would Inherit The Earth, But So Far All We've Gotten Is Minnesota And North Dakota.

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

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

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?

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

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.

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.

In Lake Wobegon, We Don't Forget Mistakes.

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

Dogs Don't Lie And Why Should I? Strangers Come They Growl And Bark, They Know Their Loved Ones In The Dark, Now Let Me, By Night Or Day, Be Just As Full Of Truth As They.

I'm A Lucky Guy. I Get To Sit Around Every Day And Indulge In Make Believe And Get Paid For It.

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.

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

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

Men Peak At Age Nineteen And Go Downhill.

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.

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

A Cruise Ship Is A Floating Town Of Lazy People.

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

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.

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?

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

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.

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

When In Doubt, Look Intelligent.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I Loved Feeling Special. I Hated Feeling Special.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Nothing You Do For Children Is Ever Wasted.

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

Finding Yourself

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

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.

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Carmelo Anthony

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