Garrison Keillor Quotes

If you can't read a simple goddam sign and follow one simple goddam instruction then get your fat butt the hell out of here. ~ Garrison Keillor

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

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 ~ Garrison Keillor

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

A girl in a bikini is like having a loaded gun on your coffee table- There's nothing wrong with them, but it's hard to stop thinking about. ~ Garrison Keillor

What liberals must conserve is the middle class: the stable family who can afford to enjoy music and theater and take the kids to Europe someday and put money in the collection plate and save for college and keep up the home and be secure against catastrophe. This family has taken big hits in payroll taxes and loss of buying power and a certain suppressed panic about job security. ~ Garrison Keillor

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

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

In romance, as in life, you only learn when you're losing. ~ Garrison Keillor

The living wander away, we don't hear from them for months, years - but the dead move in with us to stay. ~ Garrison Keillor

On investments, 1998: 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, 30 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. ~ Garrison Keillor

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

I want to resume the life of a shy person. ~ Garrison Keillor

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

The highlight of my childhood was making my brother laugh so hard that food came out of his nose. ~ Garrison Keillor

Freedom doesn't mean aimlessness. We can't just sleepwalk through life ... Freedom demands structure. ~ Garrison Keillor

In TIME June 7, 2010
On the sustainability of the publishing industry, in the Chicago Tribune:
"I think that book publishing is about to slide into the sea. We live in a literate time, and our children are writing up a storm, often combining letters and numbers ... The future of publishing: 18 million authors in America, each with an average of 14 readers, eight of whom are blood relatives. Average annual earnings: $175." - 5/26/10 ~ Garrison Keillor

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

Marrying for sex is like flying to London for the free peanuts and pretzels. It's not the point of the thing, is it? ~ Garrison Keillor

The Union is what needs defending this year. Government of Enron and by Halliburton and for the Southern Baptists is not the same as what Lincoln spoke of. This gang of Republicans has humbugged us to death on terrorism and tax cuts for the comfy and school prayer and flag burning and claimed the right to know what books we read and to dump their sewage upstream from the rest of us and clear-cut the forests and gut the IRS and promote the corporate takeover of the public airwaves and to hell with anybody who opposes them. ~ Garrison Keillor

A good friend is a person who thinks you're one of the good eggs, even if he knows you're a little cracked. ~ Garrison Keillor

Give up your good 'Christian' life and follow Jesus ~ Garrison Keillor

I don't associate work with feelings of satisfaction. Rather, guilt, frustration, and resentment of people who write better than I do. ~ Garrison Keillor

Second violins can play a concerto perfectly if they're in their own home and nobody's there. ~ Garrison Keillor

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

There is almost no marital problem that can't be helped enormously by taking off your clothes. ~ Garrison Keillor

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

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? ~ Garrison Keillor

Life is unjust and this is what makes it so beautiful. Every day is a gift. Be brave and take hold of it. ~ Garrison Keillor

What would people think?'
Jesus said that people think all sorts of things. The human mind is like a cloud of gnats. Constant motion. That's why you have to look at the heart.
'Oh,' said Grandpa. ~ Garrison Keillor

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

They say such nice things about people at their funerals that it makes me sad to realize that I'm going to miss mine by just a few days. ~ Garrison Keillor

Life itself is brief, and that is what charges the day with such ridiculous beauty. ~ Garrison Keillor

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

It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon. It was warm and bright and the trees were in full color, magnificent, explosive, like permanent fireworks - reds and yellows, oranges, some so brilliant that Crayola never put them in crayons for fear the children would color outside the lines.
["Eloise"] ~ Garrison Keillor

The drag queen walks into a Catholic church as the priest is coming down the aisle swinging the incense pot. And he says to the priest, Oh, honey, I love your dress, but did you know your handbag's on fire? ~ Garrison Keillor

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

Free enterprise runs on self interest. This is socialism and it runs on loyalty ... if people were going to live by comparison shopping, the town would go bust ... If you live there you have to take it as a whole. That's loyalty. ~ Garrison Keillor

To choose Norm Coleman over Walter Mondale is like going to a great steakhouse and ordering the tuna sandwich. ~ Garrison Keillor

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

No matter what time of year I come here, people always say the same thing: Its not usually like this. ~ Garrison Keillor

And Garrison Keillor I think is a fascinating guy and really entertaining. ~ Woody Harrelson

Sing your song; don't let the bastards get you down. ~ Garrison Keillor

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

WE DEMOCRATS are deeply flawed people, but we do stick to our guns, and believe in decency and public spiritedness and have refused to hitch our wagon to yahooism and intolerance and have supported government as a necessary force for good to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty . . . ~ Garrison Keillor

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 ... ~ Garrison Keillor

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

You young people learned spelling by the 'Close Enough' method. ~ Garrison Keillor

I'm a lucky guy. I get to sit around every day and indulge in make believe and get paid for it. ~ Garrison Keillor

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. ~ Garrison Keillor

In California virtually everyone has had their teeth whitened. If they all smiled at once, they would give us a headache. ~ Garrison Keillor

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

She gave him such a look ... Man oh man, if looks could kill. That one might have totalled a city block. ~ Garrison Keillor

Intelligence is like four-wheel drive. It only allows you to get stuck in more remote places. ~ Garrison Keillor

Lutherans don't hold bingo games in the church basement. Lutherans are against fun in general, which is why for them, birth control has never been a big issue. ~ Garrison Keillor

He takes a kitchen chair and sits in the yard and all the ducks come around. He holds up the cheese curls in one hand and caramel popcorn in the other and his audience looks up and he tells them a joke. He says: So one day a duck come into this bar and ordered a whiskey and a bump and the bartender was pretty surprised, he says, "You know we don't get many of you ducks in here." The duck says, "At these prices I'm not surprised.* And he tosses out the popcorn and they laugh. 'Wak wak wak wak wak. I was shot in the leg in the war.' Have a scar? 'No thanks, I don't smoke. ~ Garrison Keillor

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

We thank you [the soldiers recently returned from the middle east] for your service. ~ Garrison Keillor

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

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

Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose. ~ Garrison Keillor

Nothing that readers say or do strikes me as a nuisance. Anyone who cracks open a book of mine is, to me, a gem. ~ Garrison Keillor

People in cars cause accidents and accidents in cars cause people. ~ Garrison Keillor

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

A cruise ship is a floating town of lazy people. ~ Garrison Keillor

Sometimes you have to avoid mentioning things because people's feelings are tender. ~ Garrison Keillor

As a former English major, I am a sitting duck for Gift Books, and in the past few years I've gotten Dickens, Thackeray, Smollet, Richardson, Emerson, Keats, Boswell and the Brontes, all of them Great, none of them ever read by me, all of them now on a shelf, looking at me and making me feel guilty. ~ Garrison Keillor

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

A peels an apple, while B kneels to God,
C telephones to D, who has a hand
On E's knee, F coughs, G turns up the sod
For H's grave, I do not understand
But J is bringing one clay pigeon down
While K brings down a nightstick on L's head,
And M takes mustard, N drives to town,
O goes to bed with P, and Q drops dead,
R lies to S, but happens to be heard
By T, who tells U not to fire V
For having to give W the word
That X is now deceiving Y with Z,
Who happens, just now to remember A
Peeling an apple somewhere far away. ~ Howard Nemerov

That's the news from Lake Woebegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average. ~ Garrison Keillor

We all know you can get AIDS from sex, but did you know that you can get sex from aides? ~ Garrison Keillor

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

I write on a laptop, so it's impossible to count drafts anymore. ~ Garrison Keillor

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

America of the future will be all malls connected by interstates. All because your parents no longer can their own tomatoes. ~ Garrison Keillor

Never insult a writer. You may find yourself immortalized in ways you may not appreciate. ~ Garrison Keillor

Roy Blount's stuff makes me laugh so hard, sometimes I have to go sit in a room and shut the door ~ Garrison Keillor

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

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. ~ Garrison Keillor

By God, no matter what Republicans say, the people of this country really do care about each other. We are not a cold people. By God, when John F. Kennedy said, "Ask what you can do for your country," he spoke to this country's heart and conscience. ~ Garrison Keillor

Your life is a work of art, and in the end, the underlying theme of great art is bravery and hope and love. ~ Garrison Keillor

It?s a beautiful descent in a 737, into the Bitterroot Valley, following the Clark Fork River, on a perfect golden autumn day . ~ Garrison Keillor

A lovely thing about Christmas is that it's compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together. ~ Garrison Keillor

Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car. ~ Garrison Keillor