The things we laugh at are awful while they are going on, but get funny when we look back. And other people laugh because they’ve been through it too. The closest thing to humor is tragedy.
JAMES THURBERThings have dropped from me. I have outlived certain desires; I have lost friends, some by death… others through sheer inability to cross the street.
More James Thurber Quotes
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I write humor the way a surgeon operates, because it is a livelihood, because I have a great urge to do it, because many interesting challenges are set up, and because I have the hope it may do some good.
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Unless artists can remember what it was to be a little boy, they are only half complete as artist and as man.
JAMES THURBER -
Time is for dragonflies and angels. The former live too little and the latter live too long.
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The laughter of man is more terrible than his tears, and takes more forms -hollow, heartless, mirthless, maniacal.
JAMES THURBER -
Writers of comedy have outlook, whereas writers of tragedy have, according to them, insight.
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Americans want to go to heaven without dying.
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The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is anybody’s guess.
JAMES THURBER -
I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method.
JAMES THURBER -
You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.
JAMES THURBER -
The act of writing is either something the writer dreads or actually likes, and I actually like it. Even re-writing’s fun. You’re getting somewhere, whether it seems to move or not.
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But what is all this fear of and opposition to Oblivion? What is the matter with the soft Darkness, the Dreamless Sleep?
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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.
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Beautiful things don’t ask for attention.
JAMES THURBER -
The dog has seldom been successful in pulling man up to its level of sagacity, but man has frequently dragged the dog down to his.
JAMES THURBER -
Sixty minutes of thinking of any kind is bound to lead to confusion and unhappiness.
JAMES THURBER