My characters never die screaming in rage. They attempt to pull themselves back together and go on. And that’s basically a conservative view of life.
Hungry ears are sharp ones.
There weren’t too many books by women that were taught in school, so I read those on my own, and the books I read were as accessible as the ones we were reading in school.
In every society, the artists will be the ones who set themselves up as contrary to whatever the society expects.
Love is a general emotion. Marriage is exactingly specific.
I was an only child. I’ve known only children. From this experience, I do believe that the children should outnumber the parents.
I had spent years thinking about one thing while I was doing another. I had, in fact, prided myself on being able to do two things at once.
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.
If novels and stories are bulletins from the progressive states of ignorance a writer passes through over the years, observations and opinions about horses are all the more so, since horses are more mysterious than life and harder to understand.
I loved the house the way you would any new house, because it is populated by your future, the family of children who will fill it with noise or chaos and satisfying busy pleasures.
Ignorance is a self-generating state of mind; one of its characteristics is that it doesn’t recognize itself as ignorance.
Good intentions are wicked! As far as I can see, all they lead to are lies and delusions.
My great fear is not that I’ll run out of ideas. It’s that I’ll run out of time.
People with good intentions never give up!
Your sons weren’t made to like you. That’s what grandchildren are for.
I think that the Cold War was an exceptional and unnecessary piece of cruelty.
I thought I might write mysteries for the rest of my life.
If to live is to progress, if you are lucky, from foolishness to wisdom, then to write novels is to broadcast the various stages of your foolishness.
In his 30 years of broadcasting and publishing fiction, Garrison Keillor has set the laugh bar pretty high.
There can never be such a thing as a free market, because it is human nature to cheat, monopolize, and buy off others so as to corner the market.