“Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.”

I don’t believe the writer should know too much where he’s going. If he does, he runs into old man blueprint—old man propaganda.

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.

I am not a cat man, but a dog man, and all felines can tell this at a glance – a sharp, vindictive glance.

Writers of comedy have outlook, whereas writers of tragedy have, according to them, insight.

Sixty minutes of thinking of any kind is bound to lead to confusion and unhappiness.

Don’t get it right, just get it written.

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.

Women are wiser than men because they know less and understand more.

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself.

Humor and pathos, tears and laughter are, in the highest expression of human character and achievement, inseparable.

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.

There are two kinds of light – the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.

Reason is 6/7 of treason.

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.

We choose to believe in Ma’at. We create order out of chaos, beauty out of ugly randomness. That’s what Egypt is all about.

Chaos should be regarded as extremely good news!

When I was not the cause of some chaos, a chaos of such proportions that it would provoke a general corruption or a distubance so formal that even after my death its effects would still be felt.

Chaos is impatient. It’s random. And above all it’s selfish. It tears down everything just for the sake of change, feeding on itself in constant hunger. But Chaos can also be appealing. It tempts you to believe that nothing matters except what you want.

You have to rise above the squabbling and chaos, and keep believing. You have to always keep your goals in mind.” -Hera, goddess of marriage

A great deal of the chaos in the world occurs because people don’t appreciate themselves.

Artists love to immerse themselves in chaos in order to put it into form, just as God created form out of chaos in Genesis. Forever unsatisfied with the mundane, the apathetic, the conventional, they always push on to newer worlds.

There is an aristocracy of the sensitive. They represent the true human tradition of permanent victory over cruelty and chaos.