Garrison Keillor

When you're in your 20s, your 30s, even, you have - at least, I had - vast ambitions, and you sit around mooning about these things, and you're depressed, because you haven't done them. And it takes you a long time to come to the realization that if you can't be John Updike, well, then, you can't. ”

I write for a radio show that, no matter what, will go on the air Saturday at five o'clock central time. You learn to write toward that deadline, to let the adrenaline pick you up on Friday morning and carry you through, to cook up a monologue about Lake Wobegon and get to the theater on time. ”

Lake Wobegon, the little town that time forgot and the decades cannot improve. ”

A 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. ”

Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people. ”

I'm not busy... a woman with three children under the age of 10 wouldn't think my schedule looked so busy. ”

I've wanted to be a writer since I was a boy, though it seemed an unlikely outcome since I showed no real talent. But I persevered and eventually found my own row to hoe. Ignorance of other writers' work keeps me from discouragement and I am less well-read than the average bus driver. ”