The Best Garrison Keillor quotes

A child can educate just about anybody. — Garrison Keillor

Children can find other children to be pals. Children need fathers to be fathers. — Garrison Keillor

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

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

It’s important for survival that children have their own experiences, the kind they learn from. The kind their parents arrange for are not as useful. Good parents are the hardest to get rid of. — Garrison Keillor

I’m not busy… a woman with three children under the age of 10 wouldn’t think my schedule looked so busy. — Garrison Keillor

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

Cleverness is a burden after that. You are supposed to settle down and be a good person, raise your children, and be good to your friends, which you may not have been back when you were clever. — Garrison Keillor

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

That’s the news from Lake Woebegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good–looking, and all the children are above average. — Garrison Keillor

A compassionate conservative is someone who electrocutes juveniles but lets them have a last ‘make a wish’. — Garrison Keillor

I want to resume the life of a shy person. — Garrison Keillor

They did not weave their lives around yours. They had their own lives, which were mysterious to you. — Garrison Keillor

In romance, as in life, you only learn when you’re losing. — Garrison Keillor

You can go your whole life and not need math or physics for a minute, but the ability to tell a joke is always handy. — Garrison Keillor

The French have a new president, the British will soon have a new P.M., and we envy them as we endure the endless wait for this small dim man to go back to Texas and resume his life. — Garrison Keillor

When you’re a little kid, your heart is open and tender and a harsh word can go straight in and become part of your life. — Garrison Keillor

All fiction comes from a little bit of reality, otherwise it would have no relevance. The fun is in innovation, take something real like this fair, and make it something larger than life. — Garrison Keillor

It’s a shallow life that doesn’t give a person a few scars. — Garrison Keillor

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

The mass of men lead lives of shallow happiness; the superior man exults in his gloom. — Garrison Keillor

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

One reads books in order to gain the privilege of living more than one life…. — Garrison Keillor

A romp in the hay lingers like the first line of a song, but your true love is the one you make a life with and write more than a line about, you write a whole book. — Garrison Keillor

It is more worthy in the eyes of God . . . if a writer makes three pages sharp and funny about the lives of geese than to make three hundred fat and flabby about God or the American people. — Garrison Keillor

Life is continuous. Life never stops. We come to the really great questions and before we can answer them, life has moved on to something else. — Garrison Keillor

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

Tv news is as bloody as Shakespeare but without the intelligence and the poetry. If you watch television news you know less about the world than if you drank gin out of a bottle — Garrison Keillor

You’d learn more about the world by lying on the couch and drinking gin out of a bottle than by watching the news. — Garrison Keillor

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

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

Jesus said the meek would inherit the earth, but so far all we’ve gotten is Minnesota and North Dakota. — Garrison Keillor

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

When you come to expect humor of people, you will never get it. — Garrison Keillor

Humor has to surprise us; otherwise, it isn’t funny. It’s a death knell for a writer to be labeled a humorist because then it’s not a surprise anymore. — 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. — Garrison Keillor

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

Humor needs to come in under cover of darkness, in disguise, and surprise people. — Garrison Keillor

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

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

Some people have a love of their fellow man in their hearts, and others require a light anesthetic. — Garrison Keillor

I can write anywhere. I write in airports. I write on airplanes. I’ve written in the back seats of taxis. I write in hotel rooms. I love hotel rooms. I just write wherever I am whenever I need to write. — Garrison Keillor

Secret of life is to go through something harrowing that doesnt kill you…and to love one woman for the rest of your life. — Garrison Keillor

The great unrequited love tears open your heart to the beauty of the world, its small rivers and upland meadows. It also makes you kinder to the next hundred thousand persons who cross your path. — Garrison Keillor

Life (pause) is a struggle, and if you should feel really happy, be patient: this will pass. — Garrison Keillor

We come from people who brought us up to believe that life is a struggle, and if you should feel really happy, be patient: this will pass. — Garrison Keillor

There’s no mastery to be had. You love the attempt. You don’t master a story any more than you master a river. You feel lucky to canoe down it. — Garrison Keillor

I love rhymes; I love to write a poem about New York and rhyme ‘oysters’ with ‘The Cloisters.’ And ‘The lady from Knoxville who bought her brassieres by the boxful.’ I just feel a sort of small triumph. — Garrison Keillor

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

Your car, comfort though it be, this little den and dining room on wheels, is a prison that deadens your senses, and to feel wholly alive you must go for a walk. — Garrison Keillor

A person does feel sheepish picking on journalists, a class already so richly despised that if a planeload of them crashed in flames, most people would smile from pure reflex. — Garrison Keillor

Sometimes I think I understand everything–then I regain consciousness. — Garrison Keillor

A good newspaper is never nearly good enough but a lousy newspaper is a joy forever. — Garrison Keillor

Easter is so disappointing. You suffer all the way through lent, and what do you get for it? A ham. — Garrison Keillor

The rich can afford to be progressive. Poor people have reason to be afraid of the future. — Garrison Keillor

No matter what time of year I come here, people always say the same thing: Its not usually like this. — 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

I think if the church put in half the time on covetousness that it does on lust, this would be a better world for all of us. — Garrison Keillor

Lake Wobegon, the little town that time forgot and the decades cannot improve. — Garrison Keillor

When you’re old you feast on your memories, and if you spend too much time on exercise, you may get old and not have many. — 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

My ancestors were Puritans from England. They arrived here in 1648 in the hope of finding greater restrictions than were permissible under English law at that time. — Garrison Keillor

Spending time in a church does not make you religious, any more than spending time in a garage makes you a car. — Garrison Keillor

People do what they are told not to do. It happens time and time again. Here on the frozen tundra, it is known as the Tongue on the Frozen Pump Handle principle. — Garrison Keillor