James Thurber
James Thurber
James Grover Thurberwas an American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright, and celebrated wit. Thurber was best known for his cartoons and short stories, published mainly in The New Yorker magazine and collected in his numerous books. One of the most popular humorists of his time, Thurber celebrated the comic frustrations and eccentricities of ordinary people. In collaboration with his college friend Elliott Nugent, he wrote the Broadway comedy The Male Animal, later adapted into a film, which starred Henry Fonda and...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionCartoonist
Date of Birth8 December 1894
CityColumbus, OH
CountryUnited States of America
The only rules comedy can tolerate are those of taste, and the only limitations those of libel.
Last night I dreamed of a small consolation enjoyed only by the blind: Nobody knows the trouble I've not seen!
The appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy, cannot be understood unless one sits among the audience and feels the warmth created by the quality of laughter that the audience takes home with it.
It's a naive domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.
Discussion in America means dissent.
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.
Progress was all right. Only it went on too long.
My opposition to Interviews lies in the fact that offhand answers have little value or grace of expression, and that such oral give and take helps to perpetuate the decline of the English language.
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.
If I have sometimes seemed to make fun of Woman, I assure you it has only been for the purpose of egging her on.
I don't believe the writer should know too much where he's going. If he does, he runs into old man blueprint—old man propaganda.
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.
These are the days of bootleg love.
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.