James Thurber Quotes

We all know that the theater and every play that comes to Broadway have within themselves, like the human being, the seed of self-destruction and the certainty of death. The thing is to see how long the theater, the play, and the human being can last in spite of themselves.

"Who are you?" the minstrel asked. "I am the Golux," said the Golux, proudly, "the only Golux in the world, and not a mere Device."

The sharp edges of old reticences are softened in the autobiographer by the passing of time - a man does not pull the pillow over his head when he wakes in the morning because he suddenly remembers some awful thing that happened to him fifteen or twenty years ago, but the confusions and the panics of last year and the year before are too close for contentment. Until a man can quit talking loudly to himself in order to shout down the memories of blunderings and gropings, he is in no shape for the painstaking examination of distress and the careful ordering of event so necessary to a calm and balanced exposition of what, exactly, was the matter.

If a playwright tried to see eye to eye with everybody, he would get the worst case of strabismus since Hannibal lost an eye trying to count his nineteen elephants during a snowstorm while crossing the Alps.

To see things thousands of miles away, things hidden behind walls and within rooms, things dangerous to come to, to draw closer, to see and be amazed.

"What would you do without me? Say 'nothing.'"
"Nothing," said the Prince.
"Good. Then you're helpless and I'll help you."

Seeing is deceiving. It's eating that's believing.

With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs.

There was a mist of moss to ride through and a storm of glass.

"Taking a single letter from the alphaber," he said, "should make life simpler."

"I don't see why. Take the F from life and you have lie. It's adding a letter to simple that makes it simpler. Taking a letter from hoarder makes it harder."

Somebody has said that woman's place is in the wrong. That's fine. What the wrong needs is a woman's presence and a woman's touch. She is far better equipped than men to set it right.

Ne regardez pas en arrière avec colère,
ni devant avec crainte,
mais autour de vous avec conscience.

Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?

Don't get it right, get it written.

Lately, I have been wondering if there is time left for daydreaming in this 21st-century world of constant communication.