Garrison Keillor famous 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

#Christian #Religious #Humor

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.
-- Garrison Keillor

#Views #Long #Lucky

Sometimes there is nothing you can do, and in those times, you must do something anyway.
-- Garrison Keillor

#Sometimes

I think there's a lot of power in listening to one person talking to you. And this should never be underestimated.One person sitting and talking to you and, you're pulled in, in ways that technology and art and all cannot.
-- Garrison Keillor

#Art #Technology #Thinking

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

#Thank You #Thanksgiving #Forgiveness

It was a pleasure to have somebody else be the boss. It wouldn't have been nearly as much fun any other way. He's been around and made a lot of movies and he's a great straightforward person to work for. And it was a pleasure to see other people to pick up characters that you've sketched out loosely on paper and make them into something fascinating.
-- Garrison Keillor

#Fun #Character #People

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.
-- Garrison Keillor

#Love #Goodbye #Farewell

I felt bad for that world that we have given a generation of kids.
-- Garrison Keillor

#Kids #Generations #World

What keeps faith cheerful is the extreme persistence of gentleness and humor. Gentleness is everywhere in daily life, a sign that faith rules through ordinary things: through cooking and small talk, through storytelling, making love, fishing, tending animals and sweet corn and flowers, through sports, music, and books, raising kids-all the places where the gravy soaks in and grace shines through. Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people. Lacking any other purpose in life, it would be good enough to live for their sake.
-- Garrison Keillor

#Sports #Sweet #Flower

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.
-- Garrison Keillor

#People #Different #Actors

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

#Love #Funny #Christmas

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

#Stress #Stuff #Worried

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

#Funny #Life #Writing

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.
-- Garrison Keillor

#Children #Fun #Home

A book is a gift you can open again and again.
-- Garrison Keillor

#Happiness #Christmas #Thank You

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

#Writing #Laptops #Impossible

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

#Thinking #Perfect #Language

I usually don't work with other people; I do the whole show myself.
-- Garrison Keillor

#People #Shows

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

#War #School #Community

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

#People #Feelings #Sometimes

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

#Family #Children #Single Mom

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

#Children #Single Parent

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

#Running #Morning #Pain

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

#Girl #Boys #Land

You get old and you realize there are no answers, just stories.
-- Garrison Keillor

#Age #Stories #Answers

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

#Beauty #Thinking #Mind

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

#Fake People #Believe #Eye

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

#Thinking #History

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

#Memorable #Vodka

Being Lutheran, Mother believed that self-pity is a deadly sin and so is nostalgia, and she had no time for either
-- Garrison Keillor

#Mother #Self #Nostalgia

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

#Nature #Cat #Garden

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

#Beautiful #Dog #Writing

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

#Inspirational #Brother #Sibling

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

#Air #Luxury #Empires

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.
-- Garrison Keillor

#Girl #Coffee #Thinking

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

#People #Mouths #Earth

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

#Book #Thinking #Order

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

#Funny #Clothes #Comedy

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

#Beautiful #Good Luck #Accepting

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

#Sex #Touching #Technique

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

#Shining #Grace #World

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.
-- Garrison Keillor

#Mistake #Writing #Mean

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

#Strength #Success #Encouraging

It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars.
-- Garrison Keillor

#Inspirational #Giving #Risk

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.
-- Garrison Keillor

#Daughter #Fathers Day #Running

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

#Time #Eye #Reality

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 #Thanksgiving #Good Life

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

#Strong Women #Children #Lakes

I've wanted to be a writer since I was a boy, though it seemed an unlikely outcome since I showed no real talent. But I persevered and eventually found my own row to hoe. Ignorance of other writers' work keeps me from discouragement and I am less well-read than the average bus driver.
-- Garrison Keillor

#Real #Writing #Ignorance

The funniest line in English is 'Get it?' When you say that, everyone chortles.
-- Garrison Keillor

#Funny #Lines

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

#Girl #War #Fighting

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

#Husband #Father #Caring