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She wasn’t much to look at but she was something to think about.

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.
JAMES THURBER

Act Move Myself Writing
I am not a cat man, but a dog man, and all felines can tell this at a glance – a sharp, vindictive glance.
JAMES THURBER

Man Myself Sharp
With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs.
JAMES THURBER

Definite Development Face Myself Structure
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.
JAMES THURBER

Catch Herself Known Myself Poet Quite Writing
Sixty minutes of thinking of any kind is bound to lead to confusion and unhappiness.
JAMES THURBER

Confusion Happiness Thinking
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.
JAMES THURBER

Business Evidence Government History Ourselves Time
Humor and pathos, tears and laughter are, in the highest expression of human character and achievement, inseparable.
JAMES THURBER

Achievement Character Expression Humor Laughter Separate
One martini is all right. Two are too many, and three are not enough.
JAMES THURBER

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

Behavior Man Mindset Understand
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.
JAMES THURBER

Book Dreams Evidence Live Myself Thinking
You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.
JAMES THURBER

Face Fall Yourself
Comedy has to be done en clair. You can’t blunt the edge of wit or the point of satire with obscurity. Try to imagine a famous witty saying that is not immediately clear.
JAMES THURBER

Clear Comedy Famous Imagination Point
The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is anybody’s guess.
JAMES THURBER

Future Guess Past Sound
Love is what you’ve been through with somebody.
JAMES THURBER

Break Up Love Yourself
Mutual suspicions of mental inadequacy are common during the first year of any marriage.
JAMES THURBER

Marriage Mutual Thinking
Where most of us end up there is no knowing, but the hellbent get where they are going.
JAMES THURBER

Destination Direction End Journey Path
There are two kinds of light – the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.
JAMES THURBER

Deep Glow Illumination Kind Light
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 THURBER

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

Artist Childhood Man Remember
The difference between our decadence and the Russians is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathetic.
JAMES THURBER

Brutal Difference Ourselves
A pinch of probability is worth a pound of perhaps.
JAMES THURBER

Probability Thinking Worth
Let the meek inherit the earth — they have it coming to them.
JAMES THURBER

Come Earth Inheritance Weakness
So much has already been written about everything that you can’t find out anything about it.
JAMES THURBER

Finding Writing Yourself
The trouble with the lost generation is that it didn’t get lost enough.
JAMES THURBER

Enough Generation Lost Trouble
Man has gone long enough, or even too long, without being man enough to face the simple truth that the trouble with man is man.
JAMES THURBER

Enough Hard Time Man Simplicity Trouble Truth
Things have dropped from me. I have outlived certain desires; I have lost friends, some by death… others through sheer inability to cross the street.
JAMES THURBER

Cross Desire Friendship Lost Street
Nowadays men lead lives of noisy desperation.
JAMES THURBER

Desperate Live Man Noisy

She wasn’t much to look at but she was something to think about.

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She wasn’t much to look at but she was something to think about.

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