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

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.

An evil person is like a dirty window, they never let the light shine through.

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

The infectiousness of crime is like that of the plague.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.

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.

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.

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.

Death is not natural for a state as it is for a human being, for whom death is not only necessary, but frequently even desirable.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Painting, I think it’s like jazz.

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

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

I think that sexuality is only attractive when it’s natural and spontaneous.

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 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.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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

House guests should be regarded as perishables: Leave them out too long and they go bad.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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