- Dusty: [singing] I used to work in Chicago, at a convenience store. / I used to work in Chicago. I did but I don't anymore. / A lady walked in with some porcelain skin and I asked her what she came in for. / "Liquor," she said, and lick her I did, and I don't work there anymore.
- Guy Noir: She had a Mount Rushmore t-shirt on, and those guys never looked so good. Especially Jefferson and Lincoln. Kind of bloated but happy.
- Lola Johnson: What if you die some day?
- Garrison Keillor: I will die.
- Lola Johnson: Don't you want people to remember you?
- Garrison Keillor: I don't want them to be told to remember me.
- [from trailer]
- Garrison Keillor: We come from people who brought us up to believe that life is a struggle, and if you should feel really happy, be patient: this will pass.
- Dangerous Woman: The death of an old man is not a tragedy. Forgive him his shortcomings, and thank him for all his love and care.
- Dusty: [singing] When God created woman / He gave her not two breasts but three. / When the middle one got in the way, / God performed surgery. / Woman stood before God / With the middle breast in hand / Said,"What do we do with the useless boob?" / And God created man.
- Yolanda Johnson: How about just a moment of silence?
- Garrison Keillor: Silence on the radio... I don't know how that works.
- Garrison Keillor: The penguin joke. Two penguins standing on an ice floe. And the first penguin says, "You look like you're wearing a tuxedo." And the second penguin says, "What makes you think I'm not?"
- Dangerous Woman: Is there more?
- Garrison Keillor: No.
- Dangerous Woman: That's the joke?
- Garrison Keillor: Uh huh.
- Dangerous Woman: Why is that funny?
- Garrison Keillor: I guess it's funny because people laugh at it.
- Dangerous Woman: I'm not laughing.
- Garrison Keillor: You're an angel.
- Guy Noir: A lot of good people up there on the stage. A lot of them. I mean, I'm a man of the world like yourself. But these folks put their lives into this.
- Axeman: Now they can put their lives into something else. That's the beauty of the world. There's always something to put your life into, isn't there? It's like the scripture tells us, you have to lose your life before you can find it.
- Jearlyn Steele: [singing] The day is short, The night is long, Why do we work so hard, To get what we don't even want?
- Lefty: The blind man's seeing eye dog pissed on the blind man's shoe. The blind man said "Here Rover, here's a piece of beef for you." His wife said "Don't reward him, you can't just let that pass." The blind man said "I gotta find his mouth so I can kick him in the ass."
- Molly: [to Garrison] The show's running 6 minutes short, Lola is going to sing a song, and your barn doors are open.
- Yolanda Johnson: It's an old Carter family song, right?
- Lola Johnson: A what?
- Yolanda Johnson: Carter family, sweetheart. Just like us, only famous.
- Lola Johnson: This isn't really going to be your last show, is it?
- Garrison Keillor: Every show is your last show. That's my philosophy.
- Rhonda Johnson: Thank you, Plato. Kierkegaard.
- Al, Stage Manager: About that obscene song you sang last week...
- Dusty: Obscene? Uh...
- Al, Stage Manager: Yeah.
- Dusty: 'I'll give you my moonshine if you show me your jugs'?
- Al, Stage Manager: No, not that one.
- Dusty: ' Lovin' you ain't easy, but I hear your sister is'?
- Al, Stage Manager: No, no, no. 'Come ride my pony all night long. 'Come ride him bareback, I'll sing you a song.' That one.
- Dusty: That's just a song about ridin' a pony. Oh, what - what the hell did you think it was about?
- Al, Stage Manager: Let's go out with a little style, Okay? What do you say?
- Dangerous Woman: When I used to listen to them, it was like they were all my really good friends.
- Axeman: But something else happened, right?
- Dangerous Woman: Right.
- Axeman: Well, I'm that something else.
- Guy Noir: This radio show was done out of an old theater called the Fitzgerald and it had been on the air since Jesus was in the third grade.
- Guy Noir: And her hair! It was what God had in mind when he said "Let there be..."
- Al, Stage Manager: Hair, right?
- Dangerous Woman: Do you believe in the fullness of time and the spirit? Most people don't, you know. It would be good, Mr. Noir, if you would open your heart to the fullness of time and the spirit, which upholds and sustains us through all this world. Amen.
- Guy Noir: Whatever you say.
- [first lines]
- Radio Announcer: Market reports today, barrows and gilts uh two hundred twenty to two hundred sixty pounds, they're lower at forty dollars uh sows are steady three hundred five hundred pounds thirty four to thirty seven dollars going over to feeder cattle, beef steers - one hundred twenty to one hundred fifty dollars and two hundred to three hundred
- [fade out]
- Rhonda Johnson: Hey, that was a terrific eulogy you gave old man Soderbergh at his memorial service.
- Garrison Keillor: Thank you.
- Guy Noir: Too bad the old coot couldn't have been there to hear it.
- Yolanda Johnson: Yeah... and to have missed it by just a few days.
- Guy Noir: They got old, babe. They started thinking about ease and comfort. Then I figure, they saw a brochure about an island with palm trees and an azure sky and miles of sand, and they thought: ''Hey! Ah! Ah! We don't have to suffer through these miserable Minnesota winters. We don't have to freeze our butts off waiting for our bus to come, our bus has come. It's here. We'll leave the business to the kids and we'll head for paradise and to hell with it.'' Only trouble is, the kids had already gone down to paradise ahead of them. So then, a big corporation down in Texas offered then a gazillion dollars for it. Texans. Sure. They talk funny and their eyes don't focus and their flesh is rotting and falling off, but hey. You know. So what? Yeah, nobody's perfect and, Uh... Money is money, so the Soderbergs took the dough. End of story. Do you have any tweezers?
- Guy Noir: It was curtains and everybody knew it, but nobody said so. They were Midwesterners. They felt like if you ignored bad news, it might go away. Not my philosophy, but I'm not from here.
- Guy Noir: A quiet night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets. But one man is still looking for the answers to life's persistent questions. That's me.
- Guy Noir: It was a rainy Saturday night in St. Paul and I had just finished off a grilled cheese sandwich with beans for a chaser.
- Guy Noir: I'd taken temporary employment about six years before doing security for a radio show called "A Prairie Home Companion" on account of a serious cash-flow problem due to a lack of missing heiresses and dead tycoons lying in the solarium with lipstick stains on their smoking jackets. In other words, I was broke.
- Lefty: Now, how long you been doin' this?
- Garrison Keillor: Doin' what? Puttin' my pants on?
- Lefty: How long you been doin' radio?
- Garrison Keillor: Oh. I don't know. Thirty-some years, I guess. Started out in Mark Twain Days, Mississippi River and they hired me to play Huck Finn. I was running a raft on the Mississippi and carrying people across, and, it ran into the wake of a steamboat.
- Rhonda Johnson: Hey, Rich, that's that Honolulu mama, how she could dance in her pink pajamas when she took off her Oahu Oahu Oahu.
- Guy Noir: She was wearing a white trench coat - so white that rain would be embarrassed to fall on it.
- Guy Noir: The skirt she was wearing was so tight you could read - the embroidery on her underwear. It said, 'Wash in lukewarm water and spin lightly.'
- Guy Noir: She was looking for the Presbyterian Church. Like a dope, I told her where it was. And out of my life she went, just as - quickly and erotically as she had entered it.
- Garrison Keillor: Are you tired of your current herring? Has it lost that certain something that you expect in a pickled fish product? If so, maybe it's time you try Jens Jenson. It's the Lake Superior herring that's made the old-fashioned Norwegian way.
- Lola Johnson: Soliloquy for a Blue Guitar: Death is easy, Like jumping into the big, blue air, And waving hello to God. God is love, But he doesn't necessarily drop everything, To catch you, does he? So, when you hook the hose up to your tailpipe, Don't expect to wake up and get toast for breakfast. The toast is you.
- Yolanda Johnson: What are you writin'?
- Lola Johnson: A poem.
- Yolanda Johnson: Oh, a poem. What's it about?
- Lola Johnson: Suicide..
- Rhonda Johnson: Oh, my God.
- Yolanda Johnson: Oh. Okay. Well, you know what my philosophy is.
- Lola Johnson: Yes, I do, so don't tell me.
- Yolanda Johnson: I think that you gotta be grateful for everything that happens to you because that's what got you here, you know? And if you hadn't gone through all the things that you went through, why, you know, you wouldn't have wound up where you are now. So, I don't know. Disappointment doesn't get you anywhere.
- Yolanda Johnson: Well, one door closes and another one opens and - you know, everything is a step along the way and it all leads to something else.
- Makeup Lady: I mean, how do you just walk away from somethin' like that? I mean, what are we? Used Kleenex?