Precision of communication is important, more important than ever, in our era of hair-trigger balances, when a false, or misunderstood word may create as much disaster as a sudden thoughtless act.
—James Thurber, American writer and cartoonist, Lanterns and Lances, 1961

Posted on March 26, 1998 at 2:16 PM

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'For God, for Country and for Yale,' the outstanding single anti-climax in the English language.
—James Thurber, American writer and cartoonist, Time, 1951

Posted on July 10, 1998 at 9:17 PM

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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, Letter to Henry Brandon; from Brandon's book As We Are, 1961

From one casual of mine he picked this sentence. "After dinner, the men moved into the living room." I explained to the professor that this was Ross's way of giving the men time to push back their chairs and stand up. There must, as we know, be a comma after every move, made by men, on this earth.
—James Thurber, Memo to The New Yorker concerning a question from an English pro

Posted on May 23, 2003 at 11:56 AM

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Humor does not include sarcasm, invalid irony, sardonicism, innuendo, or any other form of cruelty. When these things are raised to a high point they can become wit, but unlike the French and the English, we have not been much good at wit since the days of Benjamin Franklin.
—James Thurber

Posted on June 3, 2003 at 7:53 AM

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I consider that that "that" that worries us so much should be forgotten. Rats desert a sinking ship. Thats infest a sinking magazine.
—James Thurber, Memo to New Yorker

Posted on February 28, 2003 at 11:29 AM

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Editing should be, especially in the case of old writers, a counseling 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, Memo to The New Yorker, 1959

With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs.
—James Thurber, Quotation from New York Post, 1955