I don't know - is everything the U.S. does a shocking embarrassment?

Respect and fear are two different things.

I say, when your hair turns gray and your children think they know who you are, do the thing that shakes up who you think you are, even who you had prided yourself on being. When all those around you say they simply don't recognize you any longer, that's the real compliment.

With any novel that you begin, you can't foresee how difficult or easy it's going to be, and you can't really prepare yourself. You just have a take it one step at a time and know that it's all right to keep going - you can always fix it.

In his 30 years of broadcasting and publishing fiction, Garrison Keillor has set the laugh bar pretty high.

Combined families often get bad reviews, but the family my children got when they traded away 'the suffocating four-person' nuclear one is one that has benefited all of them.

I suspected that there were things he knew that I had been waiting all my life to learn.