A lovely thing about Christmas is that it's compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.

My religion would be a gentle faith that believed in the sacredness of leisure. Napping as a form of prayer.

Thank you, God, for this good life and forgive us if we do not love it enough.

They say such nice things about people at their funerals that it makes me sad that I'm going to miss mine by just a few days.

Thank you, dear God, for this good life and forgive us if we do not love it enough. Thank you for the rain. And for the chance to wake up in three hours and go fishing: I thank you for that now, because I won't feel so thankful then.

I was an English major at the University of Minnesota, and I was very shy, which many people misinterpreted as intelligence. On the basis of that wrong impression, I became the editor of the campus literary magazine.

Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function.

God writes a lot of comedy... the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny.

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.

Humor has to surprise us; otherwise, it isn't funny. It's a death knell for a writer to be labeled a humorist because then it's not a surprise anymore.