James Thurber Quotes - Page 3

Man is flying too fast for a world that is round. Soon he will catch up with himself in a great rear end collision.

But what is all this fear of and opposition to Oblivion? What is the matter with the soft Darkness, the Dreamless Sleep?

Mutual suspicions of mental inadequacy are common during the first year of any marriage.

Don't get it right, just get it written.

Laughter need not be cut out of anything, since it improves everything.

I have lived in the East for nearly thirty years now, but many of my books prove that I am never very far away from Ohio in my thoughts, and that the clocks that strike in my dreams are often the clocks of Columbus.

Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?

Writers of comedy have outlook, whereas writers of tragedy have, according to them, insight.

Editing should be, especially in the case of old writers, a counselling rather than a collaborating task. The tendency of the writer-editor to collaborate is natural, but he should say to himself, 'How can I help this writer to say it better in his own style?' and avoid 'How can I show him how I would write it, if it were my piece?'

Looks can be deceiving; it's eating that's believing.

There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.

Art – the one achievement of man which has made the long trip up from all fours seem well advised

Every man is occasionally visited by the suspicion that the planet on which he is riding is not really going anywhere; that the Force which controls its measured eccentricities hasn't got anything special in mind. If he broods on this somber theme long enough he gets the doleful idea that the laughing children on a merry-go-round or the thin, fine hands of a lady's watch are revolving more purposely than he is.

Every time is a time for comedy in a world of tension that would languish without it. But I cannot confine myself to lightness in a period of human life that demands light. We all know that, as the old adage has it, "It is later than you think." But I also say occasionally: "It is lighter than you think." In this light let's not look back in anger, or forward in fear, but around in awareness.

We are a nation that has always gone in for the loud laugh, the wow, the yak, the belly laugh, and the dozen other labels for the roll- em-in-the-aisles gagerissimo. This is the kind of laugh that delights actors, directors, and producers, but dismays writers of comedy because it is the laugh that often dies in the lobby. The appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy, cannot be understood unless one sits among the audience and feels the warmth created by the quality of laughter that the audience takes home with it.

Man is troubled by what might be called the Dog Wish, a strange and involved compulsion to be as happy and carefree as a dog

If you wonder which is the stronger sex, watch which one twists the other around her little finger.

Dogs are obsessed with being happy.

I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method.

Unless artists can remember what it was to be a little boy, they are only half complete as artist and as man.

Discussion in America means dissent.

Remember laughter. You'll need it even in the blessed isles of Ever After.

I don't believe the writer should know too much where he's going. If he does, he runs into old man blueprint—old man propaganda.

Time is for dragonflies and angels. The former live too little and the latter live too long.

I never quite know when I'm not writing. Sometimes my wife comes up to me at a party and says, "Dammit, Thurber, stop writing." She usually catches me in the middle of a paragraph.