Garrison Keillor

Thank you, God, for this good life and forgive us if we do not love it enough.

— Garrison Keillor

Thank you, God, for this good life and forgive us if we do not love it enough.

— Garrison Keillor

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.

— 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

Cursing is highly effective in person - someone kicks his car in rage, forgetting he's wearing flip-flops, flames pour from his mouth, and it's impressive. But you see it in print, and it's just ugly.

— Garrison Keillor

God writes a lot of comedy, Donna; the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny.

— Garrison Keillor

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.

— 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

Lake Wobegon, where smart doesn't count for so much. 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

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.

— 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

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.

— Garrison Keillor

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

— Garrison Keillor

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.

— Garrison Keillor

The funniest line in English is “Get it?” When you say that, everyone chortles.

— Garrison Keillor

Cherish the Minnesota State Fair. Wherever you find beauty and simplicity and truth, know that there is a committee somewhere planning to improve it --- don't let them do it.

— Garrison Keillor

To many Americans, whose only knowledge of the North Star State is that it is intensely cold and populated by Swedes and Holsteins, it will come as a surprise to wake up one morning in 2004 and read in the newspaper, "Half of U.S. Economy Now in Hands of Minnesota".

— Garrison Keillor

One day Donald Trump discovers that he is owned, lock, stock, and roulette wheel, by Lutheran Brotherhood, and must renegotiate his debt load with a committee of silent Norwegians who don't understand why anyone would pay more than $120 for a suit.

— Garrison Keillor

Minnesota is a state of public-spirited and polite people, where you can get a good cappucino and eat Thai food and find any book you want and yet live on a quiet tree-lined street with a backyard and send your kids to public school. When a state this good hits the jackpot, it can only be an inspiration to everybody.

— Garrison Keillor

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

— Garrison Keillor

I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it.

— Garrison Keillor

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.

— Garrison Keillor

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.

— Garrison Keillor

Journalism is a good place for any writer to start — the retailing of fact is always a useful trade and can it help you learn to appreciate the declarative sentence. 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

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

— Garrison Keillor

I think the most un-American thing you can say is, “You can't say that.”

— Garrison Keillor

Jesus said the meek would inherit the earth, but so far all we've gotten is Minnesota and North Dakota.

— Garrison Keillor

None of the men and women who voted for this bill has any right to speak in public about the rule of law anymore, or to take a high moral view of the Third Reich, or to wax poetic about the American Idea.

— Garrison Keillor

If the government can round up someone and never be required to explain why, then it's no longer the United States of America as you and I always understood it. Our enemies have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They have made us become like them.

— Garrison Keillor

If you can't trust a Methodist with absolute power to arrest people and not have to say why, then whom can you trust?

— Garrison Keillor

In electronic publishing, they're are no editors and if their are there not very good.

— Garrison Keillor

We made our mistakes back in the 20th century, Lord knows, but we never nominated a man for president who brags about not reading. Calvin Coolidge had his limits. Warren G. Harding spent more time on his hair than strictly necessary. Lyndon Baines Johnson was a piece of work. But all of them read books. When I envision a Trump Presidential Library, I see enormous chandeliers and gold carpet and a thousand slot machines. God help us. I mean it. We’re in trouble down here.

— Garrison Keillor

I want to resume the life of a shy person.

— 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

It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my home town, out on the edge of the prairie...

— Garrison Keillor

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

— Garrison Keillor

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.

— Garrison Keillor

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.

— Garrison Keillor

Thank you, God, for this good life and forgive us if we do not love it enough.

— Garrison Keillor

Thank you, God, for this good life and forgive us if we do not love it enough.

— Garrison Keillor

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

— Garrison Keillor

My religion would be a gentle faith that believed in the sacredness of leisure. Napping as a form of prayer.

— Garrison Keillor

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.

— Garrison Keillor

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.

— Garrison Keillor

Welcome to Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.

— 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