110+ Garrison Keillor Quotes On Humorous, Nostalgic And Minnesota.

Garrison Keillor is an American author, storyteller, humorist, and radio personality. He is best known for his long-running public radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, which he hosted from 1974 to 2016. He is also the author of several books, including Lake Wobegon Days, The Book of Guys, and Pilgrims. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Garrison Keillor on life, humorous, nostalgic.

Top 10 Garrison Keillor Quotes

1. Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car.
2. Welcome to Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.
3. It was luxuries like air conditioning that brought down the Roman Empire. With air conditioning their windows were shut, they couldn't hear the barbarians coming.
4. Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.
5. A lovely thing about Christmas is that it's compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.
6. Thank you, God, for this good life and forgive us if we do not love it enough.
7. Sometimes there is nothing you can do, and in those times, you must do something anyway.
8. Beauty isn't worth thinking about; what's important is your mind. You don't want a fifty-dollar haircut on a fifty-cent head. ~Garrison Keillor
9. Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.
10. 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.

Garrison Keillor Image Quotes

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch. — Garrison Keillor

Garrison Keillor Short Quotes

• A book is a gift you can open again and again.
• Years ago, manhood was an opportunity for achievement, and now it is a problem to be overcome.
• Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function.
• Love has the power to rescue us and not let go, otherwise it isn't love
• In Lake Wobegon, we don't forget mistakes.
• Being rich and thin isn't everything.
• All solutions are temporary, so why not go for duct tape?
• A man can't eat anger for breakfast and sleep with it at night and not suffer damage to his soul.
• My ability to keep cool in a crisis is based entirely on not knowing all the facts.
• The mass of men lead lives of shallow happiness; the superior man exults in his gloom.

Garrison Keillor Quotes About Life

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

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

One reads books in order to gain the privilege of living more than one life. People who don't read are trapped in a mine shaft, even if they think the sun is shining. — Garrison Keillor

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

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

You've got work to do. Don't put this off. And don't take the long view, here. You know? Life is today and tomorrow and - and if you're lucky, next week. — Garrison Keillor

You learn this great lesson of life: it's not about me. It's just not. The matter of talent-which seemed so important to you when you were young-is not of great importance. We're simply a conduit. We take things out of the air into us and put them in the form of stories. That's pretty much it. — 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

Garrison Keillor Quotes About Humorous

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

Have interesting failures.... If you need to have a personal crisis have it now. Don't wait until midlife, when it will take longer to resolve.... Don't pity yourselves. Lighten up. Seek people with a sense of humor. Avoid humorless people-and do not marry one, for God's sake. — Garrison Keillor

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

Humor is not about problems with airline luggage handlers. It's about our lives in America and it's about the ends of our lives and it's about everything that happens after that and everything that happened before. — 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

If you lived today as if it were your last, you'd buy up a box of rockets and fire them all off, wouldn't you? — Garrison Keillor

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

Garrison Keillor Quotes About Minnesota.

As for family values, they are whatever they are - some families are tight, others are blown away like dandelion puffs. A main value in Minnesota is still: don't waste my time, don't B.S. me, I wasn't born yesterday. — Garrison Keillor

When it comes to finding available men in Minnesota, the odds are good, but the goods are odd. — Garrison Keillor

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

I was an English major at the University of Minnesota, and I was very shy, which many people misinterpreted as intelligence. On the basis of that wrong impression, I became the editor of the campus literary magazine. — Garrison Keillor

..people (in Minnesota) avoid stupidity when possible, not wanting to be a $10 haircut on a 50 cent head. — Garrison Keillor

Garrison Keillor Quotes About People

If you can't trust a Methodist with absolute power to arrest people and not have to say why, then whom can you trust? — 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

March is the month God created to show people who don't drink what a hangover is like. — 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

A cruise ship is a floating town of lazy people. — Garrison Keillor

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

The reason to retire is to try to avoid embarrassment; you ought to do it before people are dropping big hints. You want to be the first to come up with the idea. You don't want to wait until you trip and fall off the stage. — Garrison Keillor

There's so many people who move around our country and lose track of their own ancestry. It's nice to know where you come from. — 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

... and people are to march around the church to commemorate the event, Palm Sunday, when Jesus rode into Jerusalem and was greeted with applause and with palms. People thought he had come to overthrow the Romans, but ... no ... he had come to change THEM ... and that led to things turning bad. — Garrison Keillor

Garrison Keillor Quotes About Reality

I believe that sometimes you have to look reality in the eye and deny it. — Garrison Keillor

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

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

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

Garrison Keillor Quotes About Children

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

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

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

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

A child can educate just about anybody. — Garrison Keillor

Garrison Keillor Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

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

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. — 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

God writes a lot of comedy... the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny. — 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

Powdermilk biscuits: Heavens, theyre tasty and expeditious! Theyre made from whole wheat, to give shy persons the strength to get up and do what needs to be done — Garrison Keillor

The relationship between truth and a newspaper is like the relationship between the color green and the number seven. Occasionally you will see the number seven written in green, but you learn not to expect this. — Garrison Keillor

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

A girl in a bikini is like having a loaded pistol on your coffee table - There's nothing wrong with them, but it's hard to stop thinking about it. — Garrison Keillor

Where I'm from we don't trust paper. Wealth is what's here on the premises. If I open a cupboard and see, say, thirty cans of tomato sauce and a five-pound bag of rice, I get a little thrill of well-being - much more so than if I take a look at the quarterly dividend report from my mutual fund. — Garrison Keillor

IMPORTANT Book reading is a solitary and sedentary pursuit, and those who do are cautioned that a book should be used as an integral part of a well-rounded life, including a daily regimen of rigorous physical exercise, rewarding personal relationships, and sensible low-fat diet. A book should not be used a as a substitute or an excuse. — Garrison Keillor

Sex is not a mechanical act that fails for lack of technique, and it is not a performance by the male for the audience of the female; it is a continuum of attraction that extends from the simplest conversation and the most innocent touching through the act of coitus. — Garrison Keillor

The fundamental religion of most of mankind is the faith that God has revealed Himself to us and not to the barbarians. Our tribe is the one God chose and so if we vanquish the other tribes and rain fire and destruction on them, we're only carrying out God's Will. — Garrison Keillor

Where I come from, when a Catholic marries a Lutheran it is considered the first step on the road to Minneapolis. — Garrison Keillor

I am a cheerful man, even in the dark, and it's all thanks to a good Lutheran mother. . . . Mother was well composed, a true Lutheran, and taught me to Cheer up, Make yourself useful, Mind your manners, and above all, Don't feel sorry for yourself. — Garrison Keillor

A young writer is easily tempted by the allusive and ethereal and ironic and reflective, but the declarative is at the bottom of most good writing. — Garrison Keillor

I hiked around town, the air sweet and dry, and was sort of overwhelmed by the perfection of it -- the old courthouse, the train depot, Mount [Jumbo] and Mount Sentinel rising up, the neon bars, the funky festivity of a college town . — 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

Don't pour the oil directly into my navel, pour it on my sternum and let it run down into my navel, you ignorant peasant. — Garrison Keillor

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

He was admired for never being at a loss for words and never wasting any either. — Garrison Keillor

Pumpkin pie is a living symbol of mediocrity. The best pumpkin pie you ever ate wasn't all that much different from the worst pumpkin pie you ever ate. — Garrison Keillor

If the marriage needs help, the answer almost always is have more fun. Drop your list of grievances and go ride a roller coaster. — Garrison Keillor

I hear a little firecracker go off when you come up with a good rhyme. — Garrison Keillor

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 — Garrison Keillor

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

An interesting thing about New York City is that the subways run through the sewers. — Garrison Keillor

Minnesota is a state of public-spirited and polite people, where you can get a good cappucino and eat Thai food and find any book you want and yet live on a quiet tree-lined street with a backyard and send your kids to public school. When a state this good hits the jackpot, it can only be an inspiration to everybody. — Garrison Keillor

Liberalism is dead, so dead that Democrats have all become moderate Republicans, and the heavy hand of Big Government is now limp and damp and trembly. — Garrison Keillor

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

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

As for kissing on the first date, you should never date someone whom you would not wish to kiss immediately. — Garrison Keillor

I thought A Prairie Home Companion would be an interesting thing to do for a summer or so. Public radio was just seven years old in 1974. It was a tiny organization in which a lot of things got started simply because there was all this time to fill. If you wanted to do an hour on Lithuanian folk dancing, you probably could have done it. — Garrison Keillor

Never insult a writer. You may find yourself immortalized in ways you may not appreciate. — Garrison Keillor

A compassionate conservative is someone who electrocutes juveniles but lets them have a last 'make a wish'. — 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

It?s a beautiful descent in a 737, into the Bitterroot Valley, following the Clark Fork River, on a perfect golden autumn day . — Garrison Keillor

I've seen the truth, and it makes no sense. — Garrison Keillor

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

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

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. — Garrison Keillor

I write for a radio show that, no matter what, will go on the air Saturday at five o'clock central time. You learn to write toward that deadline, to let the adrenaline pick you up on Friday morning and carry you through, to cook up a monologue about Lake Wobegon and get to the theater on time. — Garrison Keillor

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? — 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

I don't have a great eye for detail. I leave blanks in all of my stories. I leave out all detail, which leaves the reader to fill in something better. — Garrison Keillor

I think the most un-American thing you can say is, 'You can't say that.' — Garrison Keillor

I used to think that kid might become a preacher. Now I don't see how he's going to stay out of prison. Nobody in this family ever went to prison for sex crimes. He'd be the first. Yes, says Jesus, you never know about these things. He and Grandpa are drinking cups of coffee and eating ginger snaps. Grandpa says, When are you planning to return to earth? Soon as I finish this coffee, say Jesus. Pretty good, isn't it. — Garrison Keillor

In the end, all solutions are temporary. — Garrison Keillor

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

To your left is the marina where several senior cabinet officials keep luxury yachts for weekend cruises on the Potomac. Some of these ships are up to 100 feet in length; the Presidential yacht is over 200 feet in length, and can remain submerged for up to 3 weeks. — 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

Life Lessons by Garrison Keillor

Garrison Keillor encourages readers to appreciate the small moments in life. He emphasizes the importance of living in the present and cherishing the people and experiences that make life meaningful. He also encourages readers to be kind and generous to others, and to find joy in the simple things.