This is Democratic bedrock: we don't let people lie in the ditch and drive past and pretend not to see them dying. Here on the frozen tundra of Minnesota, if your neighbor's car won't start, you put on your parka and get the jumper cables out and deliver the Sacred Spark that starts their car. Everybody knows this. The logical extension of this spirit is social welfare and the myriad government programs with long dry names all very uninteresting to you until you suddenly need one.

I'm of an age when if I started to do eulogies, I'd be doing nothing else. You don't want to be remembered? I don't want them to be told to remember me.

Childhood is the small town everyone came from.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.

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.

Spending time in a church does not make you religious, any more than spending time in a garage makes you a car.

The highlight of my childhood was making my brother laugh so hard that food came out of his nose.