You don't have to justify a beautiful stroke of good luck. Accept it. Smile and say thank you.
Garrison KeillorScripture doesn't promise that God will remove temptation, only that you'll be given strength to withstand it.
Garrison KeillorWhere I'm from we don't trust paper. Wealth is what's here on the premises. If I open a cupboard and see, say, thirty cans of tomato sauce and a five-pound bag of rice, I get a little thrill of well-being - much more so than if I take a look at the quarterly dividend report from my mutual fund.
Garrison KeillorSport is a seductive metaphor (life as a game in which we gain victory through hard work, discipline, and visualizing success). but the older metaphor of farming (life as hard labor that is subject to weather and quirks of blind fate and may return no reward whatsoever and don't be surprised) is still in our blood.
Garrison KeillorA 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.
Garrison KeillorForget 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