Thurber Quotes & Sayings

I drew pictures rapidly and with few lines, because I had to write most of the pieces, too, and couldn't monkey long with the drawings. The divine urge was no higher than that. — James Thurber

Humourists lead ... an existence of jumpiness and apprehension. They sit on the edge of the chair of Literature. In the house of Life they have the feeling that they have never taken off their overcoats. — James Thurber

I've already got the storm figured out. Some idiot blew up the sun. Some dumb Russian general pushed the wrong button and launched one of their million missiles, or maybe NASA misaimed one of our test rockets. Either way, the sun is gone and we're now engaged in a nuclear shootout. It's the end of everything. Batman and Superman aren't coming and James Bond doesn't have a trick up his sleeve to save us this time. In a week or a month, we'll all freeze to death, just like in that Twilight Zone episode where the pretty lady is burning up with fever, dreaming the sun is baking the world dry, when really the Earth has dropped out of orbit, is hurtling further and further away from the sun, rapidly turning into a big ball of ice. — Bob Thurber

Sean O'Connell: Sometimes I don't. If I like a moment, for me, personally, I don't like to have the distraction of the camera. I just want to stay in it. — James Thurber

Ours is a precarious language, as every writer knows, in which the merest shadow line often separates affirmation from negation, sense from nonsense, and one sex from the other — James Thurber

Technically, 'Kukla, Fran and Ollie' was a kids' show, but adults watched almost religiously - and we're talking adult adults, celebrated adults - including James Thurber, Orson Welles, John Steinbeck, Adlai E. Stevenson and lyricist Stephen Sondheim. — Tom Shales

No male can beat a female in the long run because they have it over us in sheer, damn longevity. — James Thurber

I think that maybe if women and children were in charge we would get somewhere. — James Thurber

Muggs was always sorry, Mother said, when he bit someone, but we could never understand how she figured this out. He didn't act sorry. — James Thurber

Many of the writers who have inspired me most are outside the genre: Humorists like Robert Benchley and James Thurber, screenwriters like Ben Hecht and William Goldman, and journalists/columnists like H.L. Mencken, Mike Royko and Molly Ivins. — John Scalzi

I could have killed Gregory Fitzhurst at three hundred feet with my left hand. — James Thurber

It didn't work," said the King. "The cloak of invisibility didn't work."
"Yes, it did," said the Royal Wizard.
"No, it didn't," said the King. "I kept bumping into things, the same as ever."
"The cloak is supposed to make you invisible," said the Royal Wizard. "It is not supposed to keep you from bumping into things."
"All I know is, I kept bumping into things," said the King. — James Thurber

Some American writers who have known each other for years have never met in the daytime or when both were sober. — James Thurber

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. — James Thurber

You can fool too many people, too much of the time. — James Thurber

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. — James Thurber

Don't count your boobies until they are hatched. — James Thurber

Comedy has ceased to be a challenge to the mental processes. It has become a therapy of relaxation, a kind of tranquilizing drug. — James Thurber

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

At forty my faculties may have closed up like flowers at evening, leaving me unable to write my memoirs with a fitting and discreet inaccuracy, or, having written them, unable to carry them to the publisher. — James Thurber

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

The Old Man ain't afraid of hell — James Thurber

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

The whole of Paris is a vast university of Art, Literature and Music ... it is worth anyone's while to dally here for years. Paris is a seminar, a post-graduate course in everything. — James Thurber

Geep,' whuppled the parrot. — James Thurber

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

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. — James Thurber

The sanity of the average banquet speaker lasts about two and a half months; at the end of that time he begins to mutter to himself, and calls out in his sleep. — James Thurber

I have the reputation for having read all of Henry James. Which would argue a misspent youth and middle age. — James Thurber

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. — James Thurber

Man is flying too fast for a world that is round. Soon he will catch up with himself in a great rear end collision. — James Thurber

At least she's not guilty of integrity, and that's more than I can say of any Bell in four generations except my grandfather and myself. — James Thurber

The dog has seldom been successful in pulling man up to its level of sagacity, but man has frequently dragged the dog down to his. — James Thurber

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

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. — James Thurber

This is the posture of fortunes slave: one foot in the gravy, one foot in the grave. — James Thurber

Editing should be, especially in the case of old writers, a counselling 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?' — James Thurber

James Thurber was an inspiration because his drawings were so primitive. I am self-taught - I didn't go to art school - so I thought when I started doing them, 'If James Thurber can be a cartoonist, I can,' because his stuff is very raw. — Bruce Eric Kaplan

A peril of the night road is that flecks of dust and streaks of bug blood on the windshield look to me like old admirals in uniform, or crippled apple women, or the front edge of barges, and I whirl out of their way, thus going into ditches and fields and up on front lawns, endangering the life of authentic admirals and apple women who may be out on the roads for a breath of air before retiring. — James Thurber

Laughter need not be cut out of anything, since it improves everything. — James Thurber

I love the idea of there being two sexes, don't you? — James Thurber

Over the years our mother has beaten us with belts, shoes, rulers, extension cords, hair brushes, a wooden spoon, a fly swatter, a toilet brush, wire coat hangers, wooden coat hangers and sometimes one of our own toys. When you get whacked by your own paddleball paddle or you have to watch your sister getting spanked with a badminton racquet that she asked Santa Claus (AKA Grandma) to bring, you don't feel much like playing with those things ever again. — Bob Thurber

A new day always forgives you, unless it's raining and you wake up in jail. — Bob Thurber

Let me be the first to admit that the naked truth about me is to the naked truth about Salvador Dali as an old ukulele in the attic is to a piano in a tree, and I mean a piano with breasts. Senor Dali has the jump on me from the beginning. He remembers and describes in detail what it was like in the womb. My own earliest memory is of accompanying my father to a polling booth in Columbus, Ohio, where he voted for William McKinley. — James Thurber

Hens embarrass me; owls disturb me; if I am with an eagle I always pretend that I am not with an eagle; and so on down to swallows at twilight who scare the hell out of me. But pigeons have absolutely no effect on me. — James Thurber

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

Why the long face? Something happen?"
"Nothing except my grandmother is still dead and my aunt moved to Sacramento and my sister just got out of a mental hospital."
"Oh," Huey says.
I spread my sack out, ready to load. Huey folds his handkerchief in half then in half again. I need him to check my count before I can go.
"Which part of Sacramento," he says, and I shrug. — Bob Thurber

Remember laughter. You'll need it even in the blessed isles of Ever After. — James Thurber

He had as much fun in the water as any person I have known. You didn't have to throw a stick in the water to get him to go in. Of course, he would bring back a stick to you if you did throw one in. He would even have brought back a piano if you had thrown one in. — James Thurber

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

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 Thurber

It was Lisa, aged five, whose mother asked her to thank my wife for the peas we had sent them from our garden. 'I thought the peas were awful, I wish you and Mrs. Thurber were dead, and I hate trees,' said Lisa. — James Thurber

Hundreds of hysterical persons must confuse these phenomena with messages from the beyond and take their glory to the bishop rather than the eye doctor. — James Thurber

I make mistakes, but I am on the side of Good," the Golux said, "by accident and happenchance. I had high hopes of being Evil when I was two, but in my youth I came upon a firefly burning in a spider's web. I saved the victim's life."
"The firefly's ?" said the minstrel.
"The spider's. The blinking arsonist had set the web on fire. — James Thurber

I hate women because they have brought into the currency of our language such expressions as "all righty" and "yes indeedy" and hundreds of others. — James Thurber

Mutual suspicions of mental inadequacy are common during the first year of any marriage. — James Thurber

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. — James Thurber

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

He who hesitates is sometimes saved. — James Thurber

I'm sixty-five and I guess that puts me in with the geriatrics, but if there were fifteen months in every year, I'd only be forty-eight. — James Thurber

Well, I'm disenchanted, too. We're all disenchanted. — James Thurber

Women deserve to have more than 12 years between 28 and 40. — James Thurber

The laughter of man is more terrible than his tears, and takes more forms hollow, heartless, mirthless, maniacal. — James Thurber

Dogs are obsessed with being happy. — James Thurber

Beautiful things don't ask for attention. — James Thurber

A drawing is always dragged down to the level of its caption.
A word to the wise is not sufficient if it doesn't make sense. — James Thurber

I'm 65 and I guess that puts me in with the geriatrics. But if there were fifteen months in every year, I'd only be 48. That's the trouble with us. We number everything. Take women, for example. I think they deserve to have more than twelve years between the ages of 28 and 40. — James Thurber

Last night I dreamed of a small consolation enjoyed only by the blind: Nobody knows the trouble I've not seen. — James Thurber

Love is blind, but desire just doesn't give a good goddamn — James Thurber

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

I hate women because they always remember where things are. — James Thurber

My grandmother lived the latter years of her life in the horrible suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house. It leaked, she contended, out of empty sockets if the wall switch had been left on. She would go around screwing in bulbs, and if they lighted up, she would fearfully turn off the wall switch and go back to her Pearson's or Everybody's, happy in the satisfaction that she had stopped not only a costly but dangerous leakage. nothing could ever clear this up for her. — James Thurber

Authors of light pieces have, nobody knows why, a genius for getting into minor difficulties: they walk into the wrong apartments, they drink furniture polish for stomach bitters, they drive their cars into the prize tulip beds of haughty neighbors, they playfully slap gangsters, mistaking them for old school friends. — James Thurber

Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy, wealthy, and dead. — James Thurber

Human Dignity has gleamed only now and then and here and there, in lonely splendor, throughout the ages, a hope of the better men, never an achievement of the majority. — James Thurber

Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility. — James Thurber

Something very much like nothing anyone had ever seen before came trotting down the stairs and crossed the room.
"What is that?" the Duke asked, palely.
"I don't know what it is," said Hark, "but it's the only one there ever was. — James Thurber

It is better to have loafed and lost than never to have loafed at all. — James Thurber

Unless artists can remember what it was to be a little boy, they are only half complete as artist and as man. — James Thurber

You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.
Fables for Our Time, Moral of "The Owl Who Was God" (1940) — James Thurber

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

The noblest study of mankind is Man, says Man. — James Thurber

I used to wake up at 4 A.M. and start sneezing, sometimes for five hours. I tried to find out what sort of allergy I had but finally came to the conclusion that it must be an allergy to consciousness. — James Thurber

Remember ...
Keystrokes are hammer taps. Get words on paper. Don't worry about connections, character or plot. Work for an hour. Promise yourself an hour. Do nothing else but move your fingers. Make coarse shapes. Follow any emotion that pops up but never impose emotion, never fake it, and don't make up your mind or your heart ahead of time. Understand you don't know what you're doing. That's why you're here. Rough it out. Anything goes. You can decide later what any piece of text looks like, what it might mean. Don't stop. Don't question. Don't quit. Don't stop to read what you wrote. Move your fingers. You mind will have no other option but to keep up. Remember that writer's block is merely the cold marble waiting for the chisel to heat up. — Bob Thurber

But what is all this fear of and opposition to Oblivion? What is the matter with the soft Darkness, the Dreamless Sleep? — James Thurber

Humor 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 Thurber

The act of writing is either something the writer dreads or actually likes, and I actually like it. Even re-writing's fun. You're getting somewhere, whether it seems to move or not. — James Thurber

Don't get it right, just get it written. — James Thurber

Every man is occasionally visited by the suspicion that the planet on which he is riding is not really going anywhere; that the Force which controls its measured eccentricities hasn't got anything special in mind. If he broods on this somber theme long enough he gets the doleful idea that the laughing children on a merry-go-round or the thin, fine hands of a lady's watch are revolving more purposely than he is. — James Thurber

A guest at a dinner party observed the strange expression on James Thurber's face. 'Don't be concerned,' said Thurber's wife. 'He's writing.' — Sophy Burnham

There are two kinds of light - the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures. — James Thurber

In my mind ran the immortal line of James Thurber, that phrase at once so intensely comic and so pregnant with suggestions of unnameable terror: "Now we go up to the garrick and become warbs." We were going up to the garrick all right, and warbs suddenly seemed the least terrifying of the things we might become. — Anthony Boucher

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. — James Thurber

If you wonder which is the stronger sex, watch which one twists the other around her little finger. — James Thurber

I was so lucky that I didn't have anyone to copy, be impressed by. I had developed my own style, I was creating before I knew there was a Thurber, a Benchley, a Price and a Steinberg. I never saw their work until I was around thirty. — Shel Silverstein

I loathe the expression "What makes him tick." It is the American mind, looking for simple and singular solutions, that uses the foolish expression. A person not only ticks, he also chimes and strikes the hour, falls and breaks and has to be put together again, and sometimes stops like an electric clock in a thunderstorm. — James Thurber

A pinch of probability is worth a pound of perhaps. — James Thurber

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

To call such persons "humorists", a loose-fitting and ugly word, is to miss the nature of their dilemma and the dilemma of their nature. — James Thurber

I won't go down the horrible street
To see the horrible people
I'll gladly climb the terrible stair
That leads to the terrible steeple
And the terrible rats
And the terrible bats
And the cats in the terrible steeple
But I won't go down the horrible street
To see the horrible people — James Thurber