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

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.

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

A statesman who confines himself to popular legislation – or, for the matter of that, a playwright who confines himself to popular plays – is like a blind man’s dog who goes wherever the blind man pulls him, on the ground that both of them want to go to the same place.

The infectiousness of crime is like that of the plague.

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

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.

If you’re trying to create a company, it’s like baking a cake. You have to have all the ingredients in the right proportion.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Who wants a stylus. You have to get em and put em away, and you lose em. Yuck. Nobody wants a stylus.

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 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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.

He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.

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.

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.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

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.

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

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.

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

An egg today is better than a hen to-morrow.

O wise man! Give your wealth only to the worthy and never to others. The water of the sea received by the clouds is always sweet.

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

What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it’s curved like a road through mountains.

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

Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and missing? That’s the way the mind of man operates.

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

A correct answer is like an affectionate kiss.

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

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.

People still think of me as a cartoonist, but the only thing I lift a pen or pencil for these days is to sign a contract, a check, or an autograph.

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.

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.

Every time I hear a politician mention the word ‚stimulus,‘ my mind flashes back to high school biology class, when I touched battery wires to a dead frog to make it twitch.

The more violent the storm, the quicker it passes.

The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne.

To cure the British disease with socialism was like trying to cure leukaemia with leeches.

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.

If I could write directly on a typewriter or a computer, I would do it. But keyboards have always intimidated me. I’ve never been able to think clearly with my fingers in that position. A pen is a much more primitive instrument. You feel that the words are coming out of your body and then you dig the words into the page.

The pen is mightier than the sword if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp.

Painting, I think it’s like jazz.

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

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

Gentleness doesn’t get work done unless you happen to be a hen laying eggs.

We have wasted History like a bunch of drunks shooting dice back in the men’s crapper of the local bar.

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.