Garrison Keillor Quotes - Page 6

Face it: a nation that maintains a 72% approval rating on George W. Bush is a nation with a very loose grip on reality.

To Norwegians, the polka is a form of martial art.

I don't want them to be told to remember me.

God is a great humorist. He just has a slow audience to work with.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Marriage, friends, is a lifelong feast; love is no light lunch.

People in cars cause accidents and accidents in cars cause people.

Sport is a seductive metaphor (life as a game in which we gain victory through hard work, discipline, and visualizing success). but the older metaphor of farming (life as hard labor that is subject to weather and quirks of blind fate and may return no reward whatsoever and don't be surprised) is still in our blood.

I talk in subjects and verbs, and sort of wind around in concentric circles until I get far enough away from the beginning so that I can call it the end, and it ends.

We English majors...need to promote public libraries as a tool in the war against terror. How many readers of Edith Wharton have engaged in terroristic acts? I challenge you to name one...Do we need to wait until our cities lie in smoking ruins before we wake up to the fact that a first-class public library is a vital link in national defense?

I was brought up imagining that cream rises to the top, merit wins out, the race is to the swift and riches to men of understanding, but it ain't necessarily so. The swift stand a better chance if they are also beautiful.

This is Democratic bedrock: we don't let people lie in the ditch and drive past and pretend not to see them dying. Here on the frozen tundra of Minnesota, if your neighbor's car won't start, you put on your parka and get the jumper cables out and deliver the Sacred Spark that starts their car. Everybody knows this. The logical extension of this spirit is social welfare and the myriad government programs with long dry names all very uninteresting to you until you suddenly need one.

Most men are prisoners at best, Who some strong habit every drag about Like chain and ball.

Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have.

Second violins can play a concerto perfectly if they're in their own home and nobody's there.

I remember when I switched from Christmas to sex as the secret of happiness.

Boys, the first drink is a boon, the second is a gamble, the third is poor judgment, and then the rate of descent gets steep

I was afraid you had deceased,' he said. 'Or gotten engrossed in a long book.

Sing your song; don't let the bastards get you down.

I think that if writers are tempted to do other things, they ought to go do other things. They should not write if they don't feel like it. I say this as a competitor. I am not interested in encouraging people who are in competition with me.

In California virtually everyone has had their teeth whitened. If they all smiled at once, they would give us a headache.