James Thurber

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

Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?

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

Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.

The dog has got more fun out of Man than Man has got out of the dog, for the clearly demonstrable reason that Man is the more laughable of the two animals.

I think that maybe if women and children were in charge we would get somewhere.

I hate women because they always know where things are.

Women are wiser than men because they know less and understand more.

The most dangerous food is wedding cake.

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.

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.

Love is what you've been through with somebody.

The nation that complacently and fearfully allows its artists and writers to become suspected rather than respected is no longer regarded as a nation possessed with humor or depth.

Humor is a serious thing. I like to think of it as one of our greatest earliest natural resources, which must be preserved at all cost.

Woman's place is in the wrong.

The wit makes fun of other persons the satirist makes fun of the world the humorist makes fun of himself.

We all have flaws and mine is being wicked.

The difference between our decadence and the Russians' is that while theirs is brutal ours is apathetic.