quotes by James Thurber

"Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?

"
— James Thurber

"It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers."
— James Thurber

"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility."
— James Thurber

""All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why." "
— James Thurber

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

""Quick, name some towns in New Jersey""
— James Thurber

"Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?"
— James Thurber (Collecting Himself: James Thurber on Writers, Humor, and Himself)

"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 is no safety in numbers, or in anything else."
— James Thurber

"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

"There is something about a poet which leads us to believe that he died, in many cases, as long as 20 years before his birth."
— James Thurber

"I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method."
— James Thurber

"Boys are beyond the range of anybody's sure understanding, at least when they are between the ages of 18 months and 90 years."
— James Thurber

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

""I am the Golux, the only Golux in the world and not a mere device"
-The Golux"
— James Thurber (The 13 Clocks)

"The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is anybody’s guess. "
— James Thurber

"The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people – that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature."
— James Thurber

"It had only one fault. It was kind of lousy. "
— James Thurber

"The most dangerous food is wedding cake."
— 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