Top 263 Quotes & Sayings by Garrison Keillor - Page 2

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 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.

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

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

All solutions are temporary, so why not go for duct tape?

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.

Don't worry about the past and don't try to solve the future.

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.

Love has the power to rescue us and not let go, otherwise it isn't love

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.

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.

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

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.

English is the perfect language for preachers because it allows you to talk until you think of what to say.

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.

An interesting thing about New York City is that the subways run through the sewers.

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

Children can find other children to be pals. Children need fathers to be fathers.

... life itself is brief, and that is what charges the day with such ridiculous beauty.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

That's why God created marriage, so people wouldn't have to fight with strangers.

A compassionate conservative is someone who electrocutes juveniles but lets them have a last 'make a wish'.

A child can educate just about anybody.

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.

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.

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.

Humor is not a trick, not jokes. Humor is a presence in the world - like grace - and shines on everybody.

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.

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.

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.

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.

My ability to keep cool in a crisis is based entirely on not knowing all the facts.

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.

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?

Spending time in a church does not make you religious, any more than spending time in a garage makes you a car.

A cruise ship is a floating town of lazy people.

When it comes to finding available men in Minnesota, the odds are good, but the goods are odd.

You'd learn more about the world by lying on the couch and drinking gin out of a bottle than by watching the news.

God plays a lot of jokes on us to get our attention.

He was admired for never being at a loss for words and never wasting any either.

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.

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

You don't have to justify a beautiful stroke of good luck. Accept it. Smile and say thank you.

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.

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.

A married guy is responsible for everything, no matter what. Women, thanks to their having been oppressed all these years, are blameless, free as birds, and all the dirt they do is the result of premenstrual syndrome or postmenstrual stress or menopause or emotional disempowerment by their fathers or low expectations by their teachers or latent unspoken sexual harassment in the workplace, or some other airy excuse. The guy alone is responsible for every day of marriage that is less than marvelous and meaningful.

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.

Vodka is tasteless going down, but it is memorable coming up.

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.

Face it: a nation that maintains a 72% approval rating on George W. Bush is a nation with a very loose grip on reality.

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.

Not everyone has a Life's Work. Some people simply have a Life.

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

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.

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.

March is the month God created to show people who don't drink what a hangover is like.