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.”

“I'm not busy... a woman with three children under the age of 10 wouldn't think my schedule looked so busy.”

“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.”

“Thank you, dear God, for this good life and forgive us if we do not love it enough. Thank you for the rain. And for the chance to wake up in three hours and go fishing: I thank you for that now, because I won't feel so thankful then.”

“Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car.”

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

“Sometimes you have to look reality in the eye, and deny it.”

“Cursing is highly effective in person - someone kicks his car in rage, forgetting he's wearing flip-flops, flames pour from his mouth, and it's impressive. But you see it in print, and it's just ugly.”

“Nothing you do for children is ever wasted.”

“Thank you, God, for this good life and forgive us if we do not love it enough.”

“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.”

“A book is a gift you can open again and again.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars.”

“What would people think?'Jesus said that people think all sorts of things. The human mind is like a cloud of gnats. Constant motion. That's why you have to look at the heart.'Oh,' said Grandpa.”

“Just because we're fictional characters doesn't mean you can pick us up and move us anywhere you want.--the people of Lake Woebegon”