Home life is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.

My parents were the same in the pulpit as they were at home. I think that’s where a lot of preachers‘ kids get off base sometimes. Because they don’t see the same things at both places.

Painting, I think it’s like jazz.

One word from the Lord is like a piece of gold to a believer, who is like a jeweler, shaping and hammering out the promise for a number of weeks.

With all the… success that I’ve been lucky enough to get? That doesn’t happen unless the home life is solid.

A two-year-old is kind of like having a blender, but you don’t have a top for it.

I take my kids to school. And if I go to work, I go to work, and they visit me on set. I come home. I have dinner with my family. I have breakfast with my family. I have a very solid, very warm home.

I have a theory about the human mind. A brain is a lot like a computer. It will only take so many facts, and then it will go on overload and blow up.

Facts are to the mind what food is to the body.

There’s different kinds of laughs. It’s like a baseball lineup: this guy’s your power hitter, this guy gets on base, this guy works out walks. If everybody does their job, we’re gonna win.

Marriage is like a game of chess except the board is flowing water, the pieces are made of smoke and no move you make will have any effect on the outcome.

No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.

Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other breaks into pieces.

Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only to what it should be, as the egg is to the fowl; we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it.

A professor must have a theory as a dog must have fleas.

Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.

Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.

His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred.

He does it with better grace, but I do it more natural.

A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over… is saying no good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen.

Life would pall if it were all sugar; salt is bitter if taken by itself; but when tasted as part of the dish, it savours the meat. Difficulties are the salt of life.

A pen is to me as a beak is to a hen.

Writing’s just as natural to me as getting up and cooking breakfast.

I never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from people.

Music is not math. It’s science. You keep mixing the stuff up until it blows up on you, or it becomes this incredible potion.

Until I was a teenager, I used red pokeberries for lipstick and a burnt matchstick for eyeliner. I used honeysuckle for perfume.

The supernatural is the natural not yet understood.

You know those things that you throw the twigs into and it spits them out? That’s what I do. The branches are like life, and I throw them into my head and some of it comes out as humor.

A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.

Journalists are like dogs, when ever anything moves they begin to bark.

That which is not good for the bee-hive cannot be good for the bees.

I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries.

Rebellion without truth is like spring in a bleak, arid desert.

I tell people, and it’s the truth, I could sit in my garage for a week and it won’t make me a car. And you can sit in church till your bottom is flat and that won’t make you a servant of Christ.

Writers are lampposts and critics are dogs. Ask lampposts what they think about dogs. Does the dog hurt the lamppost?

Making music is like shopping for me. Every song is like a new pair of shoes.

My musical taste and image is going to change naturally. It’s not forced; I do what comes natural to me. Sometimes, I like to be dark… other times, I like to be really light and ladylike.

A lot of people don’t like the road, but it’s as natural to me as breathing.

Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes the pressure off the second.

Politics is like football; if you see daylight, go through the hole.

The more violent the storm, the quicker it passes.

I think we’re going to the moon because it’s in the nature of the human being to face challenges. It’s by the nature of his deep inner soul… we’re required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream.

Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may make you feel like you’re flying high at first, but it won’t take long before you feel the impact.

A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges.

Consider a tree for a moment. As beautiful as trees are to look at, we don’t see what goes on underground – as they grow roots. Trees must develop deep roots in order to grow strong and produce their beauty. But we don’t see the roots. We just see and enjoy the beauty. In much the same way, what goes on inside of us is like the roots of a tree.

The Church is like a great tree whose roots must be energetically anchored in the earth while its leaves are serenely exposed to the bright sunlight. In this way, she sums up a whole gamut of beats in a single living and all-embracing act, each one of which corresponds to a particular degree or a possible form of spiritualisation.

I guess if I’m a product, either you’re chocolate, you’re vanilla or you’re butterscotch. You can’t be all three.

Life’s a rollercoaster. You’re up one minute; you’re down one minute. But who doesn’t like rollercoasters?

The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

I tend to approach things from a physics framework. And physics teaches you to reason from first principles rather than by analogy.

Persistence is to the character of man as carbon is to steel.

Freedom is a man’s natural power of doing what he pleases, so far as he is not prevented by force or law.

Governing a great nation is like cooking a small fish – too much handling will spoil it.

A hospital bed is a parked taxi with the meter running.

A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but, one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.

The life of an uneducated man is as useless as the tail of a dog which neither covers its rear end, nor protects it from the bites of insects.

Our admiration of the antique is not admiration of the old, but of the natural.

A lot of people think international relations is like a game of chess. But it’s not a game of chess, where people sit quietly, thinking out their strategy, taking their time between moves. It’s more like a game of billiards, with a bunch of balls clustered together.

The spread of civilisation may be likened to a fire; first, a feeble spark, next a flickering flame, then a mighty blaze, ever increasing in speed and power.