A biography for James Thurberhasn’t been written yet.
“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.”
“You are all a lost generation," Gertrude Stein said to Hemingway. We weren't lost. We knew where we were, all right, but we wouldn't go home. Ours was the generation that stayed up all night.”
“My opposition to Interviews lies in the fact that offhand answers have little value or grace of expression, and that such oral give and take helps to perpetuate the decline of the English language.”
“In his grief over the loss of a dog, a little boy stands for the first time on tiptoe, peering into the rueful morrow of manhood. After this most inconsolable of sorrows there is nothing life can do to him that he will not be able somehow to bear.”
“Boys are beyond the range of anybody's sure understanding, at least when they are between the ages of 18 months and 90 years.”
“He who hesitates is sometimes saved.”
“A word to the wise is not sufficient if it doesn't make sense.”
“Last night I dreamed of a small consolation enjoyed only by the blind: Nobody knows the trouble I've not seen!”
“The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is anybody's guess.”
“But what is all this fear of and opposition to Oblivion? What is the matter with the soft Darkness, the Dreamless Sleep?”
“Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?”
“The laughter of man is more terrible than his tears, and takes more forms hollow, heartless, mirthless, maniacal.”
“The only rules comedy can tolerate are those of taste, and the only limitations those of libel.”
“Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?”
“Don't get it right, just get it written.”
“One martini is all right. Two are too many, and three are not enough.”
“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.”