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
Don't get it right, just get it written.
Some American writers who have known each other for years have never met in the daytime or when both were sober.
The laughter of man is more terrible than his tears, and takes more forms -hollow, heartless, mirthless, maniacal.
We are a nation that has always gone in for the loud laugh, the wow, the yak, the belly laugh, and the dozen other labels for the roll- em-in-the-aisles gagerissimo. This is the kind of laugh that delights actors, directors, and producers, but dismays writers of comedy because it is the laugh that often dies in the lobby. 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.
I love the idea of there being two sexes, don't you?
I write humor the way a surgeon operates, because it is a livelihood, because I have a great urge to do it, because many interesting challenges are set up, and because I have the hope it may do some good.
Columbus is a town in which almost anything is likely to happen, and in which almost everything has.
A pinch of probability is worth a pound of perhaps.
We all have faults, and mine is being wicked.
Men are more interesting than women, but women ae more fascinating.
I don't remember any blue poodles.
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.
Humor and pathos, tears and laughter are, in the highest expression of human character and achievement, inseparable.
Writers of comedy have outlook, whereas writers of tragedy have, according to them, insight.