It is at a fair that man can be drunk forever on liquor, love, or fights; at a fair that your front pocket can be picked by a trotting horse looking for sugar, and your hind pocket by a thief looking for his fortune.

Life is like writing with a pen. You can cross out your past but you can't erase it.

I have a spaniel that defrocked a nun last week. He took hold of the cord. I had hold of the leash. It was like elephants holding tails. Imagine me undressing a nun, even second hand.

The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.

Not even a collapsing world looks dark to a man who is about to make his fortune.

In dialogue, make sure that your attributives do not awkwardly interrupt a spoken sentence. Place them where the breath would come naturally in speech-that is, where the speaker would pause for emphasis, or take a breath. The best test for locating an attributive is to speak the sentence aloud.

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