Thurber Quotes

• Thurber was asked by a correspondent: "Why did you have a comma in the sentence, 'After dinner, the men went into the living-room'?" And his answer was probably one of the loveliest things ever said about punctuation. "This particular comma," Thurber explained, "was Ross's way of giving the men time to push back their chairs and stand up.

  Lynne Truss

  Men, Giving, Answers

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• 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

  Mother, Hate, Garden

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• Humor is, I think, the subtlest and chanciest of literary forms. It is surely not accidental that there are a thousand novelists, essayists, poets or journalists for each humorist. It is a long, long time between James Thurbers.

  Leo Rosten

  Time, Laughter, Thinking

  Leo Calvin Rosten (1959). “The return of H*y*m*a*n K*a*p*l*a*n”

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• Leaders are problem solvers by talent and temperament, and by choice. For them, the new information environment-undermining old means of control, opening up old closets of secrecy, reducing the relevance of ownership, early arrival, and location-should seem less a litany of problems than an agenda for action. Reaching for a way to describe the entrepreneurial energy of his fabled editor Harold Ross, James Thurber said" 'He was always leaning forward, pushing something invisible ahead of him.' That's the appropriate posture for a knowledge executive.

  Harlan Cleveland

  Mean, Opening Up, Editors

  Harlan Cleveland (1985). “The knowledge executive: leadership in an information society”, E P Dutton

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• 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

  Work, Creating, Style

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• Thurber did not write the way a surgeon operates, he wrote the way a child skips rope, the way a mouse waltzes.

  E. B. White

  Art, Children, Writing

  1961 In the New Yorker, 11 Nov. Tribute to James Thurber.

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• 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

  Kids, Talking, Adults

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• 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

  Party, Writing, Wife

  James Thurber, Thomas Fensch (1989). “Conversations with James Thurber”, p.61, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• 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

  Party, Writing, Expression

  Sophy Burnham (2011). “For Writers Only: Inspiring Thoughts on the Exquisite Pain and Heady Joy of the Writing Life from Its Great Practitioners”, p.23, Penguin

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