Garrison Keillor 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.

When in doubt, look intelligent.

A good friend is a person who thinks you're one of the good eggs, even if he knows you're a little cracked.

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

We are great mysteries. No matter what we imagine we may know, even for all the facts we might gather, we don't know each other. Never do, probably never will. Our reputations depend on the opinions of the ill informed. We all have better moments than anybody ever knows, and so do all the others. We are, each one of us, books that are read by critics who only glanced at the chapter headings and the jacket flap. Each one of us is a secret, and on that basis we ought to treat each other with the deepest respect.

When the country goes temporarily to the dogs, cats must learn to be circumspect, walk on fences, sleep in trees, and have faith that all this woofing is not the last word.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.

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.

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.

We'd all be alot happier if we'd stop assuming we're supposed to be happy.

Your life is a work of art, and in the end, the underlying theme of great art is bravery and hope and love.

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.

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

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.

The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons. ... Republicans: The No. 1 reason the rest of the world thinks we're deaf, dumb, and dangerous.

One day Donald Trump will discover that he is owned by Lutheran Brotherhood and must re negotiate his debt load with a committee of silent Norwegians who dont understand why anyone would pay more than $120.00 for a suit.

They say such nice things about people at their funerals that it makes me sad that I'm going to miss mine by just a few days.

A cruise ship is a floating town of lazy people.

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

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

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.

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

Nothing you do for children is ever wasted.

Intelligence is like four-wheel drive. It only allows you to get stuck in more remote places.

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