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

Humor has to surprise us; otherwise, it isn't funny. It's a death knell for a writer to be labeled a humorist because then it's not a surprise anymore.

That's what I am, Frank thought, an ordinary genius. He had unlocked the secret of radio. The sport of the ordinary! Brillliant me like Reed Seymour couldn't figure this out for the life of them! Reed was ashamed of radio. ...radio was a cinch if you kept reaching down and grabbing up handfuls of the ordinary.

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

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.

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.

The thought of people in this day and age sitting down to listen to a radio variety show on Saturday evening is rather implausible and was even more so in 1974 when we started “A Prairie Home Companion.” Thank goodness Minnesota Public Radio was too poor to afford good advice or the show never would've got on the air. We only did it because we knew it would be fun to do. It was a dumb idea. I wish I knew how to be that dumb again.