Garrison Keillor Quotes
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It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars.
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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.
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A good newspaper is never nearly good enough but a lousy newspaper is a joy forever.
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When you're in your 20s, your 30s, even, you have - at least, I had - vast ambitions, and you sit around mooning about these things, and you're depressed, because you haven't done them. And it takes you a long time to come to the realization that if you can't be John Updike, well, then, you can't.
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I want to resume the life of a shy person.
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The funniest line in English is 'Get it?' When you say that, everyone chortles.
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Welcome to Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.
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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.
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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.
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Lake Wobegon, the little town that time forgot and the decades cannot improve.
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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.
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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.
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Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.
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I'm not busy... a woman with three children under the age of 10 wouldn't think my schedule looked so busy.
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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.
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I think the most un-American thing you can say is, 'You can't say that.'
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I love New York, and I'm drawn to a certain intensity of life, but I've just never felt like I want to escape from the Midwest. A writer lives a great deal in his own head, and so one intuitively finds places where your head is more clear. New York for me is one of those places.
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My religion would be a gentle faith that believed in the sacredness of leisure. Napping as a form of prayer.
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Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.
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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.
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Sometimes you have to look reality in the eye, and deny it.
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Cherish the Minnesota State Fair. Wherever you find beauty and simplicity and truth, know that there is a committee somewhere planning to improve it -- don't let them do it.
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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.
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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.