335 Quotes by James Thurber

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

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

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.

A false or misunderstood word may create as much disaster as a sudden thoughtless act.

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

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.

Don't get it right, just get it written.

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

For one thing, she pronounced flowers 'flars' and I couldn't let it slide.