Hungry Ears Are Sharp Ones.

In His 30 Years Of Broadcasting And Publishing Fiction, Garrison Keillor Has Set The Laugh Bar Pretty High.

I Wrote The Dickens Book Because I Loved Dickens, Not Because I Felt A Kinship With Him, But After Writing The Book It Seemed To Me That There Was At Least One Similarity Between Us And That Was That Dickens Loved To Write And Wrote With The Ease And Conviction Of Breathing. Me, Too.

There Are Five Things That Societies Do: They Reproduce; They Produce Food; They Organize Themselves In Terms Of Law; They Organize Themselves In Terms Of Belief; And They Make Art. Four Of Them Are About Conformity, And In These, Everything Would Go More Smoothly If People Just Would Shut Up And Do What They're Told. But In Art It Doesn't Work That Way.

Giving His Lecture For The Third Time Freed Dr. Lionel Gift From Paying Much Attention To It. He Had A Naturally Expressive Style Of Delivery, Hones Over The Years In Elementary-econ Lecture Halls. He Knew, Without Even Thinking, To Address The Middle Rows Of The Hall, But To Occasionally "shoot" The Listeners In The Back Corners. He Knew How To Make Eye Contact And Solicit The Attention Of Those Who Were Thinking Of Other Things.

In December 1998, I Considered Myself An Expert On Love. I Was Almost A Year Into A Relationship, One That Had Grown More Slowly Than I Had Wished, But Once It Flowered It Was Much More Stimulating Than Any Marriage Or Relationship I Had Known.