Oh you who are born of the blood of the gods, Trojan son of Anchises, easy is the descent to read more

Oh you who are born of the blood of the gods, Trojan son of Anchises, easy is the descent to hell; the door of dark Dis stands open day and night. But to retrace your steps and come out to the air above, that is work, that is labor!

Writing is manual labor of the mind: a job, like laying pipe.

Writing is manual labor of the mind: a job, like laying pipe.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.

I knew that I had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if read more

I knew that I had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself.

Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.

Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.

If you just learn a single trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You read more

If you just learn a single trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.

We breathe, we think, we conceive of our lives as narratives.

We breathe, we think, we conceive of our lives as narratives.

Thurber did not write the way a surgeon operates, he wrote the way a child skips rope, the way a read more

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