The first mistake of art is to assume that it’s serious.

I never know quite 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. Or my daughter will look up from the dinner table and ask, Is he sick? No, my wife says, he’s writing something.

Modesty is a virtue not often found among poets, for almost every one of them thinks himself the greatest in the world.

All art is a revolt against man’s fate.

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.