“I am 65 and I guess that puts me in with the geriatrics. But if there were 15 months in every year, I'd only be 48. That's the trouble with us. We number everything. Take women, for example,...”
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Author detail
The author of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and the creator of numerous New Yorker magazine cover cartoons, was born in Columbus, Ohio on December, 8, 1894. One of the foremost American humorists of the 20th century, his inimitable wit and pithy prose spanned a breadth of genres, including short stories, modern commentary, fiction, children's fantasy and letters. Thurber's father, Charles, was a civil clerk, and his mother, Mame, was an eccentric woman who would influence many of her son's stories. Thurber had two brothers, William and Robert. One day while playing "William Tell" with them as youngsters, Thurber lost the sight in one eye when an arrow pierced it. Ultimately, he would go blind in both eyes, but that never stopped him from writing or drawing. Thurber CarnivalFrom 1913-1917, Thurber attended the Ohio State University where he was a member of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. It was at this time that the Thurbers rented the house at 77 Jefferson Avenue, which became Thurber House in 1984. Due to his eye injury, Thurber was not able to complete a compulsory ROTC course so OSU would not let him graduate, although they did give him an honorary degree later. Thurber launched his professional writing career as a reporter for the Columbus Dispatch in 1920. He began writing for the New Yorker in 1927 after friend E.B. White (Charlotte's Web) got him a job at the magazine. Thurber started as an editor for the magazine but quickly became a writer. His career as a cartoonist began in 1930, when White dug some of Thurber's drawings out of the trash and submitted them to be published in the New Yorker. Thurber wrote nearly forty books and won a Tony Award for his popular Broadway play, A Thurber Carnival, in which he often starred as himself. Thurber died of complications from pneumonia on November 2, 1961. --Thurberhouse.org
Quotes
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“I am 65 and I guess that puts me in with the geriatrics. But if there were 15 months in every year, I'd only be 48. That's the trouble with us. We number everything. Take women, for example,...”
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“I'm sixty-five, but if there were fifteen months in every year, I'd only be forty-eight.”
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“Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around us in awareness.”
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“Humour is emotional chaos remembered in tranquillity.”
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“Her own mother lived the latter years of her life in the horrible suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house.”
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“All men should strive to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.”
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“A lady of forty-seven who has been married twenty-seven years and has six children knows what love really is and once described it for me like this: 'Love is what you've been through with so...”
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“Though statisticians in our time have never kept the score man wants a great deal here below and Woman even more.”
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“I have always thought of a dog lover as a dog that was in love with another dog.”
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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 and Man will never know that what hit him from behind was Man.”
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“You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.”
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“Woman's place is in the wrong.”
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“All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.”
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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.”
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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.”
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“Time is for dragonflies and angels. The former live too little and the latter live too long.”
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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 cons...”
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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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“The difference between our decadence and the Russians' is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathetic.”
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“The appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy, cannot be understood unless one sits among the audience and feels the warmth created by the q...”
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