Tom Bodett famous quotes

03-23-2025

They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.
-- Tom Bodett

#Love #Happiness #Cheer
The difference between an optimist and a pessimist? An optimist laughs to forget, but a pessimist forgets to laugh.
-- Tom Bodett

#Inspirational #Funny #Differences
In school, you're taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson.
-- Tom Bodett

#Life #School #Lessons
You can make a new friend but you can't make an old one.
-- Tom Bodett

#New Friendship #New Friends
Americans are generally very self-sufficient and I think generally averse to pretension, just as I am.
-- Tom Bodett

#Thinking #Self #Self Sufficient
Mine is not a story to tell struggling writers,
-- Tom Bodett

#Struggle #Stories
It's not like Alaska isn't wilderness - it mostly is. But most Alaskans don't live in the wild. They live on the edge of the wild in towns with schools and cable TV and stores and dentists and roller rinks sometimes. It's just like anyplace else, only with mountains and moose.
-- Tom Bodett

#School #Alaska #Mountain
I come from very common stock, and I've always been uncomfortable with pretension and all the forms it can take, including disingenuous broadcasting.
-- Tom Bodett

#Common #Broadcasting #Form
Tom Kizzia hasn't just observed and written about Alaska for three-plus decades, he's lived it. 'Pilgrim's Wilderness' is a story that needed to be told by the only man who could tell it.
-- Tom Bodett

#Men #Alaska #Three
Somebody says, 'Do a Tom Bodett, a folksy kind of thing,' and it sounds like something out of 'Hee Haw,' very insulting. They turn wry humor into disparaging sarcasm, and you get what amounts to insulting advertising.
-- Tom Bodett

#Sarcasm #Insulting #Sound
People feel vulnerable when they travel. Nobody wants to be taken advantage of or talked into something they don't want. Staying at Motel 6 makes you feel smarter. In fact, I think it actually means you are smarter, but I have no hard data to support that.
-- Tom Bodett

#Taken #Mean #Thinking
Kids in Alaska don't know they're growing up on the Last Frontier. It's just what they see on the license plates, and it's something tourists like to say a lot because they've never been around so many mountains and moose before.
-- Tom Bodett

#Growing Up #Kids #Alaska
I'm real. I believe what I'm saying. If Motel 6 wasn't the type of operation they say it is - and I stay at them when I travel - I wouldn't do their commercials. That comes through on the radio, and that's what it's all about.
-- Tom Bodett

#Real #Believe #Radio
I'm happy to report you still get nothing you don't need at Motel 6, and, therefore, you don't have to pay for it. I don't need valet parking. If I can drive the old crate 300 miles to the hotel all by myself, I can certainly handle the last nine feet to the parking space.
-- Tom Bodett

#Feet #Space #Pay
I'm not an impersonator. I've only got one voice and only do one guy and his first-person essays.
-- Tom Bodett

#Voice #Guy #Firsts
Professor Al Drake encouraged me to just write the way I talk. I decided if that's what I needed to do, I didn't need to be in school to do it.
-- Tom Bodett

#School #Writing #Als
For some people, you know, Garrison Keillor, Rush Limbaugh, really the stars, they've got a passion. They eat, drink and breathe radio, and I'm not like that. I used to think I wanted to be. But I need to be away from it, too, and that's the difference, I think.
-- Tom Bodett

#Stars #Passion #Thinking

You may also like:

Amy Dickinson
Columnist
Bill Kurtis
Journalist
Charlie Pierce
Elayne Boosler
Comedian
Ellen DeGeneres
Comedian
Howard Frank Mosher
Author
Jessi Klein
Stand-up comic
Judy Tenuta
Entertainer
Maz Jobrani
Comedian
Mo Rocca
Journalist
Paula Poundstone
Comedian
Peter Sagal
Playwright
Rita Rudner
Comedian
Robert Urich
Film actor
Roy Blount, Jr.
Writer
Steven Wright
Comedian
Tig Notaro
Film writer
Tommy Smothers
Comedian
Alonzo Bodden
Comedian
Ophira Eisenberg
Comedian