A guest at a dinner party observed the strange expression on James Thurber's face. 'Don't be concerned,' said Thurber's wife. 'He's writing.'

A guest at a dinner party observed the strange expression on James Thurber's face. 'Don't be concerned,' said Thurber's wife. 'He's writing.'

... where do they go when they die? We hear of the elephant graveyards, where the elephants go to die, but how much more curious it is that birds are not falling out of the sky all the time, on our heads, at our feet, dying and falling and flopping to the ground. I rarely see a dead bird on the ground.

So loving is the universe, so joyful, so determined to give us everything we need and to love us and show us the way to live, too, that we are beaten to the ground, boiled by God's waves, as we play in the surf.

A shiver runs down your spine when you realize it is not our imagination. Something is watching us out there.

There are so many different kinds of writing and so many ways to work that the only rule is this: do what works. Almost everything has been tried and found to succeed for somebody. The methods, even the ideas of successful writers contradict each other in a most heartening way, and the only element I find common to all successful writers is persistence-an overwhelming determination to succeed.

Prayer is a law of the universe, like gravity. You don't even have to believe in God to ask.