Great Throughts Treasury

"Evil lurks in the heart of man, and anonymity tends to bring it out. Internet flamers would never say the jagged things they do if they had to sign their names."

"For me, the monologue was the favorite thing I had done in radio. It was based on writing, but in the end it was radio, it was standing up and leaning forward into the dark and talking, letting words come out of you."

"Free enterprise runs on self-interest. This is socialism and it runs on loyalty… if people were going to live by comparison shopping, the town would go bust… If you live there you have to take it as a whole. That's loyalty."

"Freedom doesn't mean aimlessness. We can't just sleepwalk through life.... Freedom demands structure."

"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."

"God writes a lot of comedy, Donna, the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny."

"He was admired for never being at a loss for words and never wasting any either."

"Humor is not a trick, not jokes. Humor is a presence in the world - like grace - and shines on everybody."

"Humor, a good sense of it, is to Americans what manhood is to Spaniards and we will go to great lengths to prove it. Experiments with laboratory rats have shown that, if one psychologist in the room laughs at something a rat does, all of the other psychologists in the room will laugh equally. Nobody wants to be left holding the joke."

"Humor, a good sense of it, is to Americans what manhood is to Spaniards and we will go to great lengths to prove it."

"I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it."

"I can see how I could write a bold account of myself as a passionate man who rose from humble beginnings to cut a wide swath in the world, whose crimes along the way might be written off to extravagance and love and art, and could even almost believe some of it myself on certain days after the sun went down if I’d had a snort or two and was in Los Angeles and it was February and I was twenty-four, but I find a truer account in the Herald-Star, where it says: Mr. Gary Keillor visited at the home of Al and Florence Crandall on Monday and after lunch returned to St. Paul, where he is currently employed in the radio show business… Lunch was fried chicken with gravy and creamed peas."

"I grew up with the Kellogg's Variety Pack in a family of eight--so I know about unfairness."

"I have taken so many wrong turns and been so careless with precious things and managed to lose, or break, or leave out in the rain so much that I loved."

"I love sweet corn. It truly is better than sex! I'm not lying! All across the Midwest tonight, a husband and wife will finish what husbands and wives do, and the wife will ask the husband: "How was that?" And, if the man is honest, he'll say "Well, it wasn't sweet corn, but it was nice." It's a fact! Sweet corn is better than sex!... Fresh sweet corn!... Store bought sweet corn, yes, sex is definitely better than that!"

"I ran a constant low fever waiting for my ride to come and take me away to something finer. I lay in bed at night, watching the red beacon on top of the water tower, a clear signal to me of the beauty and mystery of a life that waited for me far away, and thought of Housman's poem, "Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom upon the bough. It stands among the woodland ride, Wearing white for Eastertide. Now, of my three-score years and ten, Twenty will not come again..." and would have run away to where people would appreciate me, had I known of such a place, had I thought my parents would understand. But if I had said, "Along the woodland I must go to see the cherry hung with snow," they would have said, "Oh, no, you don't. You're going to stay right here and finish up what I told you to do three hours ago. Besides, those aren't cherry trees, those are crab apples.”"

"I sit and say nothing for fear my words will turn to stone and though they are sincere, they will become a prison of their own."

"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."

"I think that book publishing is about to slide into the sea. We live in a literate time, and our children are writing up a storm, often combining letters and numbers.... The future of publishing: 18 million authors in America, each with an average of 14 readers, eight of whom are blood relatives. Average annual earnings: $175."

"I think the most un-American thing you can say is, “You can't say that.”"

"I want to resume the life of a shy person."

"I was afraid you had deceased, or gotten engrossed in a long book."

"I was brought up imagining that cream rises to the top, merit wins out, the race is to the swift and riches to men of understanding, but it ain't necessarily so. The swift stand a better chance if they are also beautiful."

"If the government can round up someone and never be required to explain why, then it's no longer the United States of America as you and I always understood it. Our enemies have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They have made us become like them."

"If you can't read a simple goddam sign and follow one simple goddam instruction then get your fat butt the hell out of here."

"If you can't trust a Methodist with absolute power to arrest people and not have to say why, then whom can you trust?"

"If you give your child a vice, why not give it one that will get it through medical school?"

"If you lived today as if it were your last, you'd buy up a box of rockets and fire them all off, wouldn't you?"

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

"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."

"Intelligence is like four-wheel drive. It only allows you to get stuck in more remote places."

"It is a sin to believe evil of others but it is seldom a mistake."

"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."

"It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my home town, out on the edge of the prairie..."

"It's important for survival that children have their own experiences, the kind they learn from. The kind their parents arrange for are not as useful. Good parents are the hardest to get rid of."

"I've seen the truth, and it makes no sense."

"I've wanted to be a writer since I was a boy, though it seemed an unlikely outcome since I showed no real talent. But I persevered and eventually found my own row to hoe. Ignorance of other writers' work keeps me from discouragement and I am less well-read than the average bus driver."

"Jesus said the meek would inherit the earth, but so far all we've gotten is Minnesota and North Dakota."

"Journalism is a good place for any writer to start — the retailing of fact is always a useful trade and can it help you learn to appreciate the declarative sentence. A young writer is easily tempted by the allusive and ethereal and ironic and reflective, but the declarative is at the bottom of most good writing."

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

"Know the quiet place within your heart and touch the rainbow of possibility; be alive to the gentle breeze of communication, and please stop being such a jerk."

"Lake Wobegon, the little town that time forgot and the decades cannot improve."

"Lake Wobegon, where smart doesn't count for so much. 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."

"Liberalism is dead, so dead that Democrats have all become moderate Republicans, and the heavy hand of Big Government is now limp and damp and trembly."

"Librarians, Dusty, possess a vast store of politeness. These are people who get asked regularly the dumbest questions on God's green earth. These people tolerate every kind of crank and eccentric and mouth-breather there is."

"Life (pause) is a struggle, and if you should feel really happy, be patient: this will pass."

"Life is a struggle, and if you should feel really happy, be patient: this will pass."

"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."

"Lutherans don't hold bingo games in the church basement. Lutherans are against fun in general, which is why for them, birth control has never been a big issue."

"Mark Twain told jokes, but they somehow stayed funny for a hundred years; they're still funny today. When Mark Twain said, 'He was a good man in the worst sense of the word,' we know exactly what he's talking about. When he said 'Wagner's music is not as bad as it sounds,' it still is funny. Mark Twain was really a miracle."