Michael Dirda Quotes

I am used to wrangling crocodiles.

The parrot's so funny. He imitates me and I don't even realize he's doing it. I'm walking around the house talking to myself and whistling and the next day he's said something I've said... it's scary you know?

People forget how outcast 'They Might Be Giants' can be. They have a reputation for writing really deft, funny, clever melodies, and they also make a lot of music for kids, which is terrific, but when you see them in concert, they can rock the house.

If I have food in the house and I'm laying in bed, I go, 'I bet that Captain Crunch is lonely in the cupboard.'

If little green men land in your back yard, hide any little green women you've got in the house.

I'm not anti-fox hunting because, to me, shooting foxes is even worse and the results are horrendous.

Is there a doctor in the house? My parents want me to marry you.

I take a lot of ladies' vitamins, because I never buy my own and that's what's in the house. More iron.

I don't think I was funny until college. I lived with some Harvard MD/PhD students - they were so smart, and what I contributed to the house was, I was the funny one.

I often joke that I could write 'War and Peace' and make it sound like Geri Halliwell wrote it.

On my best day, I cannot do Scottish people. I don't even believe that's a real accent, to be honest with you. I think they probably sound like us when they're in the house. It's how they keep people away from them.

No one is more keen than me to see the Hunting Act repealed, because I believe in the management of wildlife.

When I was a little kid, I wrote this play about all these characters living in a haunted house. There was a witch who lived there, and a mummy. When they were all hassling him, this guy who bought the house - I can't believe I remember this - he said to them, 'Who's paying the mortgage on this haunted house?' I thought that was really funny.

If you want to save a species, simply decide to eat it. Then it will be managed - like chickens, like turkeys, like deer, like Canadian geese.

A clear cold morning with high wind: we caught in a trap a large gray wolf, and last night obtained in the same way a fox who had for some time infested the neighbourhood of the fort.

Of course, Mississippi participates in federal matching programs for everything from preserving the post-Civil War home of Jefferson Davis to beaver control.

So, I'm thinking of a name for a villain that has a sense of humor. I thought of 'The Joker' as a name, and as soon as I thought that, I associate it with the playing card, as my family had a tradition of champion playing; my brother was a contract champion bridge player. There were always cards around the house.

A good laugh is sunshine in the house.

I guess, for me, I've always thought that there was humor everywhere. And as a kid, I just, you know, I grew up an only child, and I - sort of nothing made me happier than to make my parents laugh. I remember I had costumes and things laying around the house that I was, you know, anything that I could do to make my parents laugh.

We have an uncanny ability to make birds do what we want them to do. In Blood Simple there's a shot from the bumper of a car and it's going up this road and a huge flock of birds takes off at the perfect moment.

George Brown ... represents the theory of Marxism in the House of Commons - but that of Groucho, not Karl.

Whether exotic wild animals have escaped or the owners have let them go, the problem is still there…. The damage has already been done.

The crown jewel of our national park system has been transformed into a hunting ground for these predators. It's just a matter of time before one of these snakes gets to a visitor.

The House of Commons starts its proceedings with a prayer. The chaplain looks at the assembled members with their varied intelligence and then prays for the country.

Do I have comedy writers? Of course I have writers—535 of them—100 in the Senate and 435 in the House.