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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

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
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
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
I can feel a thing I cannot touch and touch a thing I cannot feel. The first is sad and sorry, the second is your heart.
JAMES THURBER

Feeling Heart Sadness Sorry Touch Yourself
Discussion in America means dissent.
JAMES THURBER

Country Discussion
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
Love is what you’ve been through with somebody.
JAMES THURBER

Break Up Love Yourself
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
Art – the one achievement of man which has made the long trip up from all fours seem well advised
JAMES THURBER

Achievement Advice Art Man
A pinch of probability is worth a pound of perhaps.
JAMES THURBER

Probability Thinking Worth
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
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
If you wonder which is the stronger sex, watch which one twists the other around her little finger.
JAMES THURBER

Herself Man Sex Strong Woman Wonder
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
So much has already been written about everything that you can’t find out anything about it.
JAMES THURBER

Finding Writing Yourself

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

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

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Popular Authors

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