Garrison Keillor Quotes

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

• Death
• Funny
• Humor

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Quotes to Explore

• Death is the sanction of everything the story-teller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.

  

  Walter Benjamin
  • Death
  • Everything
  • Authority

• If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.

  

  Mahatma Gandhi
  • Long
  • Humor
  • Suicide

• After I was assaulted in Egypt, I learned fear. I've just never been so scared in my life. I've never been so close to death.

  

  Lara Logan
  • Life
  • Death
  • Fear

• People have their own deaths as well as their own lives, and even if there is nothing beyond death, we shall differ in our nothingness.

  

  E. M. Forster
  • People
  • Death
  • Own

• Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.

  

  H. L. Mencken
  • American
  • Funny
  • Nobody

• From the sons of Ith, the first of the Gael to get his death in Ireland, there came in the after time Fathadh Canaan, that got the sway over the whole world from the rising to the setting sun, and that took hostages of the streams and the birds and the languages.

  

  Lady Gregory
  • Time
  • World
  • Death

• A mate of mine told me recently, 'It's the first time I've seen you work, Worthington.' I thought that was quite funny, but he was right.

  

  Sam Worthington
  • Time
  • Work
  • Funny

• Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.

  

  Abraham Lincoln
  • Funny
  • See
  • Others

• Islam is a religion of success. Unlike Christianity, which has as its main image, in the west at least, a man dying in a devastating, disgraceful, helpless death.

  

  Karen Armstrong
  • Death
  • Success
  • Man

• We try to make the name longer and longer every year. First, it was 'Larry the Cable Guy's Christmas Spectacular.' Then it was 'It's a Very Larry Christmas.' Now it's 'Larry the Cable Guy's Hula-palooza Christmas Luau.' I'll tell you what it is: It's funny. That's what it is. Who cares what the name of it is? It is a funny special.

  

  Larry the Cable Guy
  • Guy
  • Funny
  • Christmas

• I'm not afraid of death, but I resent it. I think it's unfair and irritating.

  

  Viggo Mortensen
  • Think
  • Death
  • Afraid

• There's a rule of writing: if everything is funny, nothing is funny; if everything is sad, nothing is sad. You want that contrast.

  

  J. Michael Straczynski
  • Writing
  • Funny
  • Sad

• Flirting is funny. And it's awkward and weird.

  

  Hannah Simone
  • Funny
  • Weird
  • Awkward

• I got tired of books where the boy is a bit thick and the girl's very clever. Why does it have to such an opposition? Why can't they be like the girls and boys that I know personally, who are equally funny and equally cross? Who get things equally wrong and are equally brave? And make the same mistakes?

  

  Patrick Ness
  • Why
  • Girl
  • Funny

• When it comes to jump-starting the intricate machinery of recollection, there's nothing more effective than the scent of approaching death.

  

  Gary Krist
  • Death
  • Nothing
  • More

• I grew up in Europe, where the history comes from.

  

  Eddie Izzard
  • Up
  • History
  • Funny

• There's stuff I don't like to rehearse, really emotional things, I don't like to rehearse. You just beat it to death.

  

  Kat Dennings
  • Death
  • You
  • Emotional

• Daddy was hilarious. He could take the most mundane event and tell it so that we all on the floor laughing. He trained me in the joys of humor.

  

  Karen DeCrow
  • Humor
  • Hilarious
  • Event

• When the courts decide that murderers, rapists, and others who maliciously break our social contract deserve health care that most working Americans can't afford, they are condemning good people to death.

  

  Tammy Bruce
  • People
  • Good
  • Death

• I consider myself a spiritual atheist. I certainly believe there are forces bigger than ourselves, and that we should be searching, individually, for meaning in our lives. But I don't believe there's a supreme being, an intelligence that created everything.

  

  Alan Lightman
  • Believe
  • Spiritual
  • Atheist

• Once we started headlining at the Fillmore East, we were free to play all night, at least for the second set. 'Whipping Post' could get lengthy.

  

  Butch Trucks
  • Night
  • Free

• It was the smile which runs before a promise.

  

  Anna Katharine Green
  • Smile
  • Promise
  • Runs

• 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
  • Death
  • Funny
  • Humor