Gary Edward “Garrison” Keillor is an American author, storyteller, humorist, voice actor, and radio personality. He is best known as the creator of the Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) show A Prairie Home Companion (called Garrison Keillor’s Radio Show in some international syndication), which he hosted from 1974 to 2016. Keillor created the fictional Minnesota town Lake Wobegon, the setting of many of his books, including Lake Wobegon Days and Leaving Home: A Collection of Lake Wobegon Stories. These Garrison Keillor quotes will motivate you.
Best Garrison Keillor Quotes
- “Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car.” ~ Garrison Keillor
- “What keeps faith cheerful is the extreme persistence of gentleness and humor. Gentleness is everywhere in daily life, a sign that faith rules through ordinary things: through cooking and small talk, through storytelling, making love, fishing, tending animals and sweet corn and flowers, through sports, music, and books, raising kids-all the places where the gravy soaks in and grace shines through. Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people. Lacking any other purpose in life, it would be good enough to live for their sake.” ~ Garrison Keillor
- “We are great mysteries. No matter what we imagine we may know, even for all the facts we might gather, we don’t know each other. Never do, probably never will. Our reputations depend on the opinions of the ill informed. We all have better moments than anybody ever knows, and so do all the others. We are, each one of us, books that are read by critics who only glanced at the chapter headings and the jacket flap. Each one of us is a secret, and on that basis we ought to treat each other with the deepest respect.” ~ Garrison Keillor
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“You get old and you realize there are no answers, just stories.” ~ 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
- “Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.” ~ Garrison Keillor
- “One day Donald Trump will discover that he is owned by Lutheran Brotherhood and must re-negotiate his debt load with a committee of silent Norwegians who don’t understand why anyone would pay more than $120.00 for a suit.” ~ Garrison Keillor
- “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
- “The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons. … Republicans: The No. 1 reason the rest of the world thinks we’re deaf, dumb, and dangerous.” ~ Garrison Keillor
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“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
- “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
- “Sometimes there is nothing you can do, and in those times, you must do something anyway.” ~ Garrison Keillor
- “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” ~ 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
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“… life itself is brief, and that is what charges the day with such ridiculous beauty.” ~ Garrison Keillor
- “Thank you, God, for this good life and forgive us if we do not love it enough.” ~ Garrison Keillor
- “I want to resume the life of a shy person.” ~ Garrison Keillor
- “Intelligence is like four-wheel drive. It only allows you to get stuck in more remote places.” ~ Garrison Keillor
- “My ability to keep cool in a crisis is based entirely on not knowing all the facts.” ~ 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 quotes
- “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
- “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
- “They say such nice things about people at their funerals that it makes me sad that I’m going to miss mine by just a few days.” ~ Garrison Keillor
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“It’s a shallow life that doesn’t give a person a few scars.” ~ 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 is almost no marital problem that can’t be helped enormously by taking off your clothes.” ~ 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
- “A child can educate just about anybody.” ~ Garrison Keillor
- “Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function.” ~ Garrison Keillor
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“Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function.” ~ Garrison Keillor
- “Growing up in a place that has winter, you learn to avoid self-pity. Winter is not a personal experience, everybody else is just as cold as you, so you shouldn’t complain about it too much. You learn this as a kid, coming home crying from the cold, and Mother looks down and says, ‘It’s only a little frostbite. You’re okay.’ And thus you learn to be okay. What’s done is done. Get over it. Drink your coffee. It’s not the best you’ll ever get but it’s good enough.” ~ Garrison Keillor
- “We’d all be alot happier if we’d stop assuming we’re supposed to be happy.” ~ 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
- “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
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“Nothing you do for children is ever wasted.” ~ Garrison Keillor
- “Travel is the art form available to Everyman. You sit in the coffee shop in a strange city and nobody knows who you are, or cares, and so you shed your checkered past and your motley credentials and you face the day unarmed … And onward we go and someday in the distant future, we will stop and turn around in astonishment to see all the places we’ve been and the heroes we were.” ~ Garrison Keillor
- “Some people think it is difficult to be a Christian and to laugh, but I think it’s the other way around. God writes a lot of comedy, its just that he has so many bad actors.” ~ 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
- “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
- “All solutions are temporary, so why not go for duct tape?” ~ Garrison Keillor
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“A book is a gift you can open again and again.” ~ Garrison Keillor
- “A lovely thing about Christmas is that it’s compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.” ~ Garrison Keillor
- “Love has the power to rescue us and not let go, otherwise it isn’t love” ~ Garrison Keillor
- “The father of a daughter is nothing but a high-class hostage. A father turns a stony face to his sons, berates them, shakes his antlers, paws the ground, snorts, runs them off into the underbrush, but when his daughter puts her arm over his shoulder and says, ‘Daddy, I need to ask you something,’ he is a pat of butter in a hot frying pan.” ~ 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
- “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
- “A person cannot coast along in old destructive habits year after year and accept whatever comes along. A person must stand up on her own two legs and walk. Get off the bus and go get on another. Climb out of the ditch and cross the road. Find the road that s where you want to go. … The only sermon that counts is the one that is formed by our actions. She would quit drinking and thereby show Kyle life is what you make it. A person can grab hold of her life and change things for the better. This happens all the time. We are not chips of wood drifting down the stream of time. We have oars.” ~ Garrison Keillor
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“Humor is not a trick, not jokes. Humor is a presence in the world – like grace – and shines on everybody.” ~ 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
- “The thought of people in this day and age sitting down to listen to a radio variety show on Saturday evening is rather implausible and was even more so in 1974 when we started “A Prairie Home Companion.” Thank goodness Minnesota Public Radio was too poor to afford good advice or the show never would’ve got on the air. We only did it because we knew it would be fun to do. It was a dumb idea. I wish I knew how to be that dumb again.” ~ Garrison Keillor
- “I think the most un-American thing you can say is, ‘You can’t say that.'” ~ 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
- “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
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“When it comes to finding available men in Minnesota, the odds are good, but the goods are odd.” ~ Garrison Keillor
- “Don’t worry about the past and don’t try to solve the future.” ~ 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
- “Don’t tear up the page and start over again when you write a bad line-try to write your way out of it. Make mistakes and plunge on. Writing is a means of discovery, always.” ~ Garrison Keillor
- “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.” ~ 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
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“A cruise ship is a floating town of lazy people.” ~ Garrison Keillor
- “Girls . . . were allowed to play in the house . . . and boys were sent outdoors. . . . Boys ran around in the yard with toy guns going kksshh-kksshh, fighting wars for made-up reasons and arguing about who was dead, while girls stayed inside and played with dolls, creating complex family groups and learning how to solve problems through negotiation and roleplaying. Which gender is better equipped, on the whole, to live an adult life, would you guess?” ~ 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
- “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
- “As for kissing on the first date, you should never date someone whom you would not wish to kiss immediately.” ~ Garrison Keillor
