Garrison Keillor: I love New York, and I'm drawn to a certain intensit...

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

religious christian funny

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

flower sweet sports

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

secret philosophy book

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 dont understand why anyone would pay more than $120.00 for a suit.

Garrison Keillor

debt brotherhood one-day

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

dream mistake adventure

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

dog sleep country

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

Garrison Keillor

farewell goodbye love

Sometimes there is nothing you can do, and in those times, you must do something anyway.

Garrison Keillor

can-do sometimes

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

encouraging strength success

We'd all be alot happier if we'd stop assuming we're supposed to be happy.

Garrison Keillor

supposed-to-be assuming ifs

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

beautiful beauty thinking

There is almost no marital problem that can't be helped enormously by taking off your clothes.

Garrison Keillor

clothes comedy funny

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

and-love bravery art

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

growing-up coffee mother

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

green color numbers

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

Garrison Keillor

forgiveness thanksgiving thank-you

Forget what you learned about poetry in school. (That it's complex, opaque, a problem to be solved in 1500 words by tomorrow.) Poetry is the last preserve of honest speech and the outspoken heart. It holds the cadence of common life. It has a passion for truth and justice and liberty; it is a buoy to people in ordinary trouble: to a friend whose life has gone skidding into the meridian, who has been struck by bad news, who is frying eggs and hash browns and has whiny child clinging to his pant leg.

Garrison Keillor

heart children school

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

community war school

... life itself is brief, and that is what charges the day with such ridiculous beauty.

Garrison Keillor

mortality ridiculous

You get old and you realize there are no answers, just stories.

Garrison Keillor

age stories answers

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.