Garrison Keillor Quotes

73 Sourced Quotes

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

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

Garrison Keillor
Freedom doesn't mean aimlessness. We can't just sleepwalk through life.... Freedom demands structure.

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
No innocent man buys a gun, and no happy man writes his memoirs.

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

Garrison Keillor
Take care of your friends. Because there will come a time when you'll be no good to anyone, and the only reason for people to talk to you will be sheer habit.

Garrison Keillor
Before the world was made, when it was only darkness and mist and waters, God was well aware of Lake Wobegon, my family, our house, and He had me all sketched out down to what size my feet would be (big), which bike I would ride (Schwinn), and the five ears of corn I'd eat for supper that night.

Garrison Keillor
Humor, a good sense of it, is to Americans what manhood is to Spaniards, and we will go to great lengths to prove it. Experiments with laboratory rats have shown that, if one psychologist in the room laughs at something a rat does, all of the other psychologists will laugh equally. Nobody wants to be left holding the joke.

Garrison Keillor
People always are encouraging about a terrible loss, so that sometimes the loser would like to strangle them.

Garrison Keillor
Life itself is brief, and that is what charges the day with such ridiculous beauty.

Garrison Keillor
Those people on daytime TV talking about how their parents never gave them the positive feedback they needed and that's why they shot them- those are not Minnesotans.

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

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

Garrison Keillor
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.

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
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
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
I grew up in a gentler, slower time… Christmases were years apart, and now it's about five months from one to the next.

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
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
I have taken so many wrong turns and been so careless with precious things and managed to lose, or break, or leave out in the rain so much that I loved.

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
Bravery and adventure! That's the ticket! Don't sit and gather moss. Get up, get out, do what you dream of doing, and if it doesn't work, it doesn't work, and you don't need to made that particular mistake again, but at least you won't get old wondering what if you had.

Garrison Keillor
The little town that time forgot, that the decades cannot improve.

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
Years ago, manhood was an opportunity for achievement, and now it is a problem to be overcome.

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
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