James Thurber's Quotes
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 ThurberThe most dangerous food is wedding cake.
James ThurberLet us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.
James ThurberBut what is all this fear of and opposition to Oblivion? What is the matter with the soft Darkness, the Dreamless Sleep?
James ThurberIt is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.
James ThurberLove is what you've been through with somebody.
James ThurberI think that maybe if women and children were in charge we would get somewhere.
James ThurberAll men should strive to learn before they die, what they are running from, and to, and why.
James ThurberNowadays men lead lives of noisy desperation.
James ThurberProgress was all right. Only it went on too long.
James ThurberWhy do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?
James ThurberWell, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?
James ThurberThe dog has got more fun out of Man than Man has got out of the dog, for the clearly demonstrable reason that Man is the more laughable of the two animals.
James ThurberHumor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.
James ThurberHumor is a serious thing. I like to think of it as one of our greatest earliest natural resources, which must be preserved at all cost.
James ThurberThe 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.
James ThurberThe appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy, cannot be understood unless one sits among the audience and feels the warmth created by the quality of laughter that the audience takes home with it.
James Thurber