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 THURBERBut what is all this fear of and opposition to Oblivion? What is the matter with the soft Darkness, the Dreamless Sleep?
More James Thurber Quotes
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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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I think that maybe if women and children were in charge we would get somewhere.
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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.
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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.
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Discussion in America means dissent.
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Looks can be deceiving; it’s eating that’s believing.
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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 -
Nowadays men lead lives of noisy desperation.
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I am not a cat man, but a dog man, and all felines can tell this at a glance – a sharp, vindictive glance.
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I never really rallied after the birth of my first child.
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It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.
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The difference between our decadence and the Russians is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathetic.
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Time is for dragonflies and angels. The former live too little and the latter live too long.
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When all things are equal, translucence in writing is more effective than transparency, just as glow is more revealing than glare.
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Where most of us end up there is no knowing, but the hellbent get where they are going.
JAMES THURBER