“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.”

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

The nation that complacently and fearfully allows its artists and writers to become suspected rather than respected is no longer regarded as a nation possessed with humor or depth.

History is replete with proofs, from Cato the Elder to Kennedy the Younger, that if you scratch a statesman you find an actor, but it is becoming harder and harder, in our time, to tell government from show business.

There is no exception to the rule that every rule has an exception.

Humourists lead… an existence of jumpiness and apprehension. They sit on the edge of the chair of Literature. In the house of Life they have the feeling that they have never taken off their overcoats.

Boys are beyond the range of anybody’s sure understanding, at least when they are between the ages of 18 months and 90 years.

The trouble with the lost generation is that it didn’t get lost enough.

Two is company, four is a party, three is a crowd. One is a wanderer.

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

I never really rallied after the birth of my first child.

Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.

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

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

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

Beautiful things don’t ask for attention.

Humor is a serious thing. I like to think of it as one of our greatest earliest natural resources, which must be preserved at all cost.

Nothing exists; even if something exists, nothing can be known about it; and even if something can be known about it, knowledge about it can’t be communicated to others.

If we hold on together I know our dreams will never die Dreams see us through to forever Where clouds roll by For you and I.

Job is perhaps the oldest piece of literature known to man.

You’re walking by the tomb of Battiades, Who knew well how to write poetry, and enjoy Laughter at the right moment, over the wine.

You got to pay your dues if you want to sing the blues…And you know it don’t come easy.

I was the new boy. It was like joining a new class at school where everybody knows everybody else but me.

The idle mind knows not what it wants.

That which you know, know not; and that which you see, see not.