Latest Garrison Keillor Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• Humor is not about problems with airline luggage handlers. It's about our lives in America and it's about the ends of our lives and it's about everything that happens after that and everything that happened before.

  Garrison Keillor

  America, Problem, Ends

  "Humor has to surprise us, otherwise it isn't funny". Interview with George Plimpton, blankonblank.org. November 28, 1994.

• When the New Yorker turned down work, they turned it down in such an elaborately gentlemanly way making apologies for their own shortsightedness. Undoubtedly it was their fault but somehow for some reason this fell short of the remarkably high standard that you by your own work have set for yourself. They had a way of rejecting my work that made me feel sorry for them somehow.

  Garrison Keillor

  Sorry, Apology, Way

  "Humor has to surprise us, otherwise it isn't funny". Interview with George Plimpton, blankonblank.org. November 28, 1994.

• You don't want to get that sort of sound in your writing that boing that gives you away.

  Garrison Keillor

  Writing, Giving, Sound

  "Humor has to surprise us, otherwise it isn't funny". Interview with George Plimpton, blankonblank.org. November 28, 1994.

• When you come to expect humor of people, you will never get it.

  Garrison Keillor

  People

  "Humor has to surprise us, otherwise it isn't funny". Interview with George Plimpton, blankonblank.org. November 28, 1994.

• I think that you are only obliged to be a humorist from the age of 18 until you turn 30. Past the age of 30 I don't think there is any obligation to be clever at all.

  Garrison Keillor

  Clever, Thinking, Past

  "Humor has to surprise us, otherwise it isn't funny". Interview with George Plimpton, blankonblank.org. November 28, 1994.

• I grew up in a fundamentalist protestant family that stressed that we were a select people and so we were to avoid contact with others who did not share our faith.

  Garrison Keillor

  People, Stressed, Share

  "Humor has to surprise us, otherwise it isn't funny". Interview with George Plimpton, blankonblank.org.

• There was a price to be paid for being interested in fiction and in writing, pushing my family away. Books and authors became my family.

  Garrison Keillor

  Book, Writing, Fiction

  "Humor has to surprise us, otherwise it isn't funny". Interview with George Plimpton, blankonblank.org. November 28, 1994.

• I'm a lucky guy. I get to sit around every day and indulge in make believe and get paid for it.

  Garrison Keillor

  Believe, Indulge In, Guy

  Source: jonathanlowe.wordpress.com

• A boy wrote me once to say that he loved it when the news from Lake Wobegon came on the radio because it meant that his parents stopped arguing. That was an eye-opener for me. You work hard to polish your act and then you find out that it does people good in ways you couldn't predict.

  Garrison Keillor

  Hard Work, Eye, Boys

  Source: jonathanlowe.wordpress.com

• The audience is invisible and that's good. Somewhere my voice is drifting through a swine barn and the sound of it seems to perk up the sows' appetite. Or a lady is listening on headphones as she jogs along a beach, running to my cadence. Or a dog sits in front of the radio, head cocked, and the sibilants excite him in some mysterious way. A dog's humorist, that's me.

  Garrison Keillor

  Running, Dog, Beach

  Source: jonathanlowe.wordpress.com

• As for family values, they are whatever they are - some families are tight, others are blown away like dandelion puffs. A main value in Minnesota is still: don't waste my time, don't B.S. me, I wasn't born yesterday.

  Garrison Keillor

  Yesterday, Puff, Minnesota

  Source: jonathanlowe.wordpress.com

• Writing is the main gig and teaching and performing are sidelines, an excuse for not writing more. Working on a novel and on an opera make me seriously want to retire and find a volunteer job as a docent at the zoo explaining to schoolchildren where frogs go in the winter.

  Garrison Keillor

  Jobs, Zoos, Teaching

  Source: jonathanlowe.wordpress.com

• Nothing that readers say or do strikes me as a nuisance. Anyone who cracks open a book of mine is, to me, a gem.

  Garrison Keillor

  Book, Cracks, Nuisance

  Source: jonathanlowe.wordpress.com

• I don't associate work with feelings of satisfaction. Rather, guilt, frustration, and resentment of people who write better than I do.

  Garrison Keillor

  Writing, Frustration, People

  Source: jonathanlowe.wordpress.com

• You've got work to do. Don't put this off. And don't take the long view, here. You know? Life is today and tomorrow and - and if you're lucky, next week.

  Garrison Keillor

  Views, Next Week, Long

  "Inside Garrison Keillor’s fabled world of ‘A Prairie Home Companion’". Interview with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. July 26, 2014.

• I think there's a lot of power in listening to one person talking to you. And this should never be underestimated.One person sitting and talking to you and, you're pulled in, in ways that technology and art and all cannot.

  Garrison Keillor

  Art, Technology, Thinking

  "Inside Garrison Keillor's fabled world of 'A Prairie Home Companion'". "PBS NewsHour" with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. Jul 26, 2014.

• It was a pleasure to have somebody else be the boss. It wouldn't have been nearly as much fun any other way. He's been around and made a lot of movies and he's a great straightforward person to work for. And it was a pleasure to see other people to pick up characters that you've sketched out loosely on paper and make them into something fascinating.

  Garrison Keillor

  Fun, Character, People

  "Garrison Keillor, Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin Talk A Prairie Home Companion". movieweb.com. June 09, 2006.

• I felt bad for that world that we have given a generation of kids.

  Garrison Keillor

  Kids, Generations, World

  Source: movieweb.com

• I feel it's so hard for young actors; It's a different world that they're coming up in; there's so much money to be made off of their personal lives, and people are bound and determined to make that money.

  Garrison Keillor

  People, Different, Actors

  Source: movieweb.com

• It's confidence; it has to be something good about getting old. One of the things is that you just don't stress about some stuff that made you so worried.

  Garrison Keillor

  Stress, Stuff, Worried

  "Garrison Keillor, Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin Talk A Prairie Home Companion". movieweb.com. June 09, 2006.

• I like to sing and it's just really fun to sing, and I don't get too much. And at my house I'm not allowed to because, you know, your children can't stand it when you sing at home.

  Garrison Keillor

  Children, Fun, Home

  "Garrison Keillor, Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin Talk A Prairie Home Companion". movieweb.com. June 09, 2006.

• I write on a laptop, so it's impossible to count drafts anymore.

  Garrison Keillor

  Writing, Laptops, Impossible

  "Garrison Keillor, Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin Talk A Prairie Home Companion". movieweb.com. June 09, 2006.

• I usually don't work with other people; I do the whole show myself.

  Garrison Keillor

  People, Shows, Whole

  "Garrison Keillor, Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin Talk A Prairie Home Companion". movieweb.com. June 09, 2006.

• Sometimes you have to avoid mentioning things because people's feelings are tender.

  Garrison Keillor

  People, Feelings, Sometimes

  "An Interview With Garrison Keillor, Host of A Prairie Home Companion" by Gillian Ferris, knau.org. May 30, 2014.