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

I cannot live without books, but fewer will suffice where amusement, and not use, is the only future object.

Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.

This is a fault common to all singers, that among their friends they will never sing when they are asked; unasked, they will never desist.

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.