Majestic doesn't appeal to us. We [Americans] like the Grand Canyon better with Clarence and Arlene parked in front of it, smiling.

People meet writers and are bowled over when the writer is friendly to them and invites them to his house for a glass of wine or to shoot up heroin or whatever they do, and they talk their heads off, and a year later it comes out in a book, and there follow years of bitter and fruitless litigation, and that is why you should always keep a writer at arm's length.

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

Winter: It's not just a season, it's who we are.

Childhood is the small town everyone came from.

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.

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.