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There are two kinds of light - the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.

James Thurber

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James Thurber
Age: 66 †
Born: 1894
Born: December 18
Died: 1961
Died: November 2
Autobiographer
Cartoonist
Drawer
Humorist
Journalist
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Columbus
Ohio
James Grover Thurber
Two
Obscures
Light
Illuminates
Kind
Glare
Life
Illumination
Glow
Glowing
Kinds
Inspirational

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I have the reputation for having read all of Henry James. Which would argue a misspent youth and middle age.
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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.
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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.
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The only rules comedy can tolerate are those of taste, and the only limitations those of libel.
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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.
James Thurber
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Man is flying too fast for a world that is round. Soon he will catch up with himself in a great rear end collision.
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Editing should be, especially in the case of old writers, a counselling rather than a collaborating task. The tendency of the writer-editor to collaborate is natural, but he should say to himself, 'How can I help this writer to say it better in his own style?' and avoid 'How can I show him how I would write it, if it were my piece?'
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Somebody has said that woman's place is in the wrong. That's fine. What the wrong needs is a woman's presence and a woman's touch. She is far better equipped than men to set it right.
James Thurber
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So much has already been written about everything that you can't find out anything about it.
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The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is anybody's guess.
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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.
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Looks can be deceiving it's eating that's believing.
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If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.
James Thurber
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Some American writers who have known each other for years have never met in the daytime or when both were sober.
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It's a naive domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.
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I used to wake up at 4 A.M. and start sneezing, sometimes for five hours. I tried to find out what sort of allergy I had but finally came to the conclusion that it must be an allergy to consciousness.
James Thurber
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I myself have known some profoundly thoughtful dogs.
James Thurber
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I make mistakes, but I am on the side of Good, the Golux said, by accident and happenchance. I had high hopes of being Evil when I was two, but in my youth I came upon a firefly burning in a spider's web. I saved the victim's life. The firefly's ? said the minstrel. The spider's. The blinking arsonist had set the web on fire.
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Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?
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Nowadays men lead lives of noisy desperation.
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