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 quality of laughter that the audience takes home with it. – James Thurber
The nation that complacently and fearfully allows its artists and writers to become suspected rather than respected is no longer regarded as a nation possessed with humor or depth. – James Thurber
We all know that the theater and every play that comes to Broadway have within themselves, like the human being, the seed of self-destruction and the certainty of death. The thing is to see how long the theater, the play, and the human being can last in spite of themselves. – James Thurber
I was seized by the stern hand of Compulsion, that dark, unseasonable Urge that impels women to clean house in the middle of the night. – James Thurber
I am sorry.. Can only say time accelerated and skidded…. When my correspondents reproach me for tardiness, I can only say that I give as much attention to a letter as I do to anything I write, and I work at least six and sometimes sixteen hours a day. – William S. Burroughs, letter to Mother and Dad, 1959