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

Those people on daytime TV talking about how their parents never gave them the positive feedback they needed and that's why they shot them- those are not Minnesotans.

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.

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.

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

Being Lutheran, Mother believed that self-pity is a deadly sin and so is nostalgia, and she had no time for either

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