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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.

James Thurber

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

Enough Generation Lost Trouble
You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.
JAMES THURBER

Face Fall Yourself
Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.
JAMES THURBER

Angry Awareness Fear Future Past
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

Beginning Method Myself Open Word
Mutual suspicions of mental inadequacy are common during the first year of any marriage.
JAMES THURBER

Marriage Mutual Thinking
A burden in the bush is worth two on your hands.
JAMES THURBER

Burden Hands Worth
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
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
I was seized by the stern hand of Compulsion, that dark, unreasonable Urge that impels women to clean house in the middle of the night.
JAMES THURBER

Cleaning Hands Night Reason
I don’t believe the writer should know too much where he’s going. If he does, he runs into old man blueprintold man propaganda.
JAMES THURBER

Believe Man Myself Old Writing
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
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.
JAMES THURBER

Edge Existence Literature
I do not have a psychiatrist and I do not want one, for the simple reason that if he listened to me long enough, he might become disturbed.
JAMES THURBER

Disturb Himself Listening Reason
The difference between our decadence and the Russians is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathetic.
JAMES THURBER

Brutal Difference Ourselves
Somebody has said that woman’s place is in the wrong. That’s fine. What the wrong needs is a woman’s presence and a woman’s touch. She is far better equipped than men to set it right.
JAMES THURBER

Place Presence Right Woman Wrong

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More James Thurber Quotes