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

No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.

The supernatural is the natural not yet understood.

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

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

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.

Painting, I think it’s like jazz.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

As you heat the planet up, it’s just like boiling a pot.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

The more violent the storm, the quicker it passes.

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

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 great advantage of a hotel is that it is a refuge from home life.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

The infectiousness of crime is like that of the plague.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A correct answer is like an affectionate kiss.

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