James Thurber Quotes

Love is what you've been through with somebody

Two is company, four is a party, three is a crowd. One is a wanderer.

Editing should be, especially in the case of old writers, a counseling rather than a collaborating task. The tendency of the writer-editor to collaborate is natural, but he should say to himself, "How can I help this writer to say it better in his own style?" and avoid "How can I show him how I would write it, if it were my piece?"

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.

Walter Mitty: To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other, and to feel. That is the purpose of life.

"You have made the moon," The Jester said. "That is the moon."

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

All men should strive to learn before they die, what they are running from, and to, and why

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.

She came naturally by her confused and groundless fears, for her own mother lived the latter years of her life in the horrible suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house.

In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti.

Against the may, the could be, and the should, folly 'tis to balance doubt or hope.

When all things are equal, translucence in writing is more effective than transparency, just as glow is more revealing than glare.

Once upon a sunny morning a man who sat in a breakfast nook looked up from his scrambled eggs to see a white unicorn with a golden horn quietly cropping the roses in the garden. The man went up to the bedroom where his wife was still asleep and woke her. "There's a unicorn in the garden," he said. "Eating roses." She opened one unfriendly eye and looked at him. "The unicorn is a mythical beast," she said, and turned her back on him. The man walked slowly downstairs and out into the garden. The unicorn was still there; he was now browsing among the tulips.

Ride close together. Remember laughter. You'll need it even in the blessed isles of Ever After.