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.
Garrison KeillorWhen 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 KeillorAdolescence hits boys harder than it does girls. Girls bleed a little and their breasts pop out, big deal, but adolescence lands on a guy with both feet. . . . Your body is engulfed by chemicals of rage and despair, you pound, you shriek, you batter your head against the trees. You come away wounded, feeling that life is unknowable, can never be understood, only endured and sometimes cheated.
Garrison KeillorA 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 KeillorSome of us have a relentless urge to attempt what we can never be good at and neglect our true calling.
Garrison Keillor