The world likes humor, but it treats it patronizingly. It decorates its serious artists with laurel, and its wags with Brussels sprouts.

A good farmer is nothing more nor less than a handy man with a sense of humus.

The most puzzling thing about TV is the steady advance of the sponsor across the line that has always separated news from promotion, entertainment from merchandising. The advertiser has assumed the role of originator, and the performer has gradually been eased into the role of peddler.

Thurber did not write the way a surgeon operates, he wrote the way a child skips rope, the way a mouse waltzes.

It seemed to me that I should have a desk, even though I had no real need for a desk. I was afraid that if I had no desk in my room my life would seem too haphazard.

Nauseous. Nauseated. The first means "sickening to contemplate"; the second means "sick at the stomach." Do not, therefore, say "I feel nauseous," unless you are sure you have that effect on others.

A writer's style reveals something of his spirit, his habits, his capacites, his bias...it is the Self escaping into the open.