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

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
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Nonconformist
Nonconformity
Investing
Everybody
Else

More quotes by James Thurber

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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?'
James Thurber
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My drawings have been described as pre-internationalist, meaning that they were finished before the ideas for them had occurred to me. I shall not argue the point.
James Thurber
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The only rules comedy can tolerate are those of taste, and the only limitations those of libel.
James Thurber
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God bless... God damn.
James Thurber
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Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?
James Thurber
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There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.
James Thurber
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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.
James Thurber
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Speed is scarcely the noblest virtue of graphic composition, but it has its curious rewards. There is a sense of getting somewhere fast, which satisfies a native American urge.
James Thurber
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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 always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method.
James Thurber
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Human Dignity has gleamed only now and then and here and there, in lonely splendor, throughout the ages, a hope of the better men, never an achievement of the majority.
James Thurber
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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.
James Thurber
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Hundreds of hysterical persons must confuse these phenomena with messages from the beyond and take their glory to the bishop rather than the eye doctor.
James Thurber
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Youcanfooltoomanyofthepeopletoomuchofthetime. See Lincoln 510:35.
James Thurber
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There is no exception to the rule that every rule has an exception.
James Thurber
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So much has already been written about everything that you can't find out anything about it.
James Thurber
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Man is troubled by what might be called the Dog Wish, a strange and involved compulsion to be as happy and carefree as a dog
James Thurber
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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.
James Thurber
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I could have killed Gregory Fitzhurst at three hundred feet with my left hand.
James Thurber
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This is the posture of fortunes slave: one foot in the gravy, one foot in the grave.
James Thurber