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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.

-Garrison Keillor

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We Live A Pleasant

Garrison Keillor

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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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

A Loss For Words

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Men Peak At Age Nineteen And Go Downhill.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

A Cruise Ship Is A Floating Town Of Lazy People.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

...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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

When In Doubt, Look Intelligent.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

In The End, All Solutions Are Temporary.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Childhood Is The Small Town Everyone Came From.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Being An English Major Prepares You For Impersonating Authority.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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 .

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Give Guilt - The Gift That Lasts Forever.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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?

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

... 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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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 Want To Resume The Life Of A Shy Person.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I Loved Feeling Special. I Hated Feeling Special.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

A Child Can Educate Just About Anybody.

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.

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.

Nothing You Do For Children Is Ever Wasted.

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

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

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

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