Garrison Keillor > Quotes

“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

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

“A book is a gift you can open again and again.”
― Garrison Keillor

“I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it. ”
― Garrison Keillor

“When in doubt, look intelligent.”
― Garrison Keillor

“Thank you, dear God, for this good life and forgive us if we do not love it enough.”
― Garrison Keillor, Leaving Home

“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

“Nothing you do for children is ever wasted.”
― Garrison Keillor, Leaving Home

“You get old and you realize there are no answers, just stories.”
― Garrison Keillor, Pontoon: A Lake Wobegon Novel

“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

“Evelyn was an insomniac so when they say she died in her sleep, you have to question that.”
― Garrison Keillor, Pontoon: A Lake Wobegon Novel

“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.”
― Garrison Keillor

“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.”
― Garrison Keillor, Dusty and Lefty: The Lives of the Cowboys

“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, Happy to Be Here

“It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars.”
― 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

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

“Sex is good, but not as good as fresh sweet corn.”
― Garrison Keillor

“The most un-American thing you can say is, 'You can't say that.”
― 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

“I've seen the truth, and it makes no sense.”
― Garrison Keillor

“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

“And then I stand in front of God's Throne squinting up at His blazing glory and He says, 'You had your opportunities, boy. But did you listen? No. You went on heedlesly reading that garbagey magazine with pictures of naked girls in it. How juvenile! I gave geese more sense than that.'

Please, God. I'm only fourteen years old. A teenager. Have mercy. Be loving.

I was,' says God. 'For eons. And look at what it got me. You.'

God turns in disgust, just the way Daddy does. 'Sorry, but I'm the Creator. I take it personally. There are slugs and bugs and night-crawlers I feel better about having created - I mean, there are sparrows - I've got my eye on one right now. Is that sparrow consumed with lust? No. He mates in the spring and that's the end of it. Consider the lilies. Do they think about lily tits all the time? No. They look not and they lust not, and yet I say unto you that you will never be half as attractive as they. Therefore, I say unto you, think not about peckers and boobs and all that nonsense and your Heavenly Father will see that you meet a good woman and marry her, just as I do for the sparrow and walleye - yea verily, even the night-crawler and the eelpout. But I've told you this over and over for nineteen centuries. And now, verily, it's too late. Time's up, buster. Lights out! Game's over!”
― Garrison Keillor

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

“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.”
― Garrison Keillor

“Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known. ”
― Garrison Keillor, Lake Wobegon U.S.A.

“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?”
― Garrison Keillor, Lake Wobegon Days

“It is a sin to believe evil of others but it is seldom a mistake.”
― Garrison Keillor

“Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.”
― Garrison Keillor, We Are Still Married

“The highlight of my childhood was making my brother laugh so hard that food came out his nose. ”
― 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, Good Poems for Hard Times

“Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.”
― Garrison Keillor, Good Poems

“Know the quiet place within your heart and touch the rainbow of possibility; be alive to the gentle breeze of communication, and please stop being such a jerk.”
― Garrison Keillor, The Book of Guys: Stories

“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.”
― Garrison Keillor

“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.”
― Garrison Keillor, Leaving Home: 2a Collection of Lake Wobegon Stories

“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.”
― Garrison Keillor, Pontoon: A Lake Wobegon Novel

“Sometimes you have to look reality in the eye, and deny it.”
― 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

“I used to think that kid might become a preacher. Now I don't see how he's going to stay out of prison. Nobody in this family ever went to prison for sex crimes. He'd be the first."

Yes," says Jesus, "you never know about these things."

He and Grandpa are drinking cups of coffee and eating ginger snaps. Grandpa says, "When are you planning to return to earth?"

Soon as I finish this coffee," say Jesus. "Pretty good, isn't it.”
― Garrison Keillor

“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.”
― Garrison Keillor, Homegrown Democrat: A Few Plain Thoughts from the Heart of America

“I was afraid you had deceased,' he said. 'Or gotten engrossed in a long book.”
― 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, The Book of Guys: Stories

“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”
― Garrison Keillor

“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.”
― Garrison Keillor

“He was admired for never being at a loss for words and never wasting any either.”
― Garrison Keillor, Lake Wobegon Days

“Some people have a love of their fellow man in their hearts, and others require a light anesthetic.”
― Garrison Keillor, Life Among the Lutherans

“You're such a big liar you gotta get your neighbor to call your dog.”
― Garrison Keillor, Lake Wobegon Days

“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”
― Garrison Keillor

“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, Lake Wobegon Days

“A good newspaper is never good enough, but a lousy newspaper is a joy forever.”
― Garrison Keillor