Quotes from Garrison Keillor

you are never so smart again in a language learned in middle age nor so romantic, brave or kind.

Don't worry about the past and don't try to figure out the future

What liberals must conserve is the middle class: the stable family who can afford to enjoy music and theater and take the kids to Europe someday and put money in the collection plate and save for college and keep up the home and be secure against catastrophe. This family has taken big hits in payroll taxes and loss of buying power and a certain suppressed panic about job security.

Sometimes I think I understand everything—then I regain consciousness.

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

I feel like a blind man searching a dark room for a pair of black socks that aren't there.

James Brown went to the pearly gates and met St. Peter who took him to a room where Jerry Garcia was playing and Jimi Hendricks and Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin. James Brown says, "I was worried maybe I was going to hell, but I guess not." Jerry Garcia says "You think this is heaven?" Just then Lawrence Welk walked in and says "All right, one more time. 'The Anniversary Waltz.' And a one and a two and a one, two, three…

My own life would make a pretty dull story, I think, and I envy him as I drive to work on a cold Minnesota morning across the Mississippi River with its coal barges still struggling upstream like so many of us nowadays.

Woman: Did you know that women are smarter than men? Man: No, I didn't. Woman: See what I mean?

WE DEMOCRATS are deeply flawed people, but we do stick to our guns, and believe in decency and public spiritedness and have refused to hitch our wagon to yahooism and intolerance and have supported government as a necessary force for good to "establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty . . .

How many consultants does it take to change a lightbulb? I'll have an estimate for you a week from Monday.

How many therapists does it take to change a lightbulb? How many therapists do you think it takes to change a lightbulb?

How many pessimists does it take to change a lightbulb? Never mind. Nobody would get the joke anyway.

By God, no matter what Republicans say, the people of this country really do care about each other. We are not a cold people. By God, when John F. Kennedy said, "Ask what you can do for your country," he spoke to this country's heart and conscience.

You young people learned spelling by the 'Close Enough' method.

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

Couldn't dance because it would awaken carnal desire, which in my case was not only awake, it was dressed and down on the corner waiting for the bus.

Do you think it's right for Christians to use the names of pagan gods for the days of the week?

In TIME June 7, 2010 On the sustainability of the publishing industry, in the Chicago Tribune: I think that book publishing is about to slide into the sea. We live in a literate time, and our children are writing up a storm, often combining letters and numbers.... The future of publishing: 18 million authors in America, each with an average of 14 readers, eight of whom are blood relatives. Average annual earnings: $175. - 5/26/10

I just sort of slid into it, like you'd go for a walk in the woods and fall into a crevasse and wind up in a cave full of rubies and emeralds.

I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it...

Republicans are all about Old Glory and school prayer and the sanctity of marriage and the Fatherhood of God but when it comes to actually needing help from them, you shouldn't get your hopes up. They might send an ambulance or they might just send a Get Well card.

A book is a gift you can read again and again.

First of all, most poems aren't memorable; in fact, they make no impression at all. Sorry, but it's true. There are brave blurbs on the back cover ("writes with a lyrical luminosity that reconceptualizes experience with cognitive beauty") but you open up the goods and they're like condoms on the beach, evidence that somebody was here once and had an experience but not of great interest to the passerby.