“I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method.”

Memo to The New Yorker (1959); reprinted in New York Times Book Review (4 December 1988)
Letters and interviews

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James Thurber90

American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright 1894–1961

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“I read a book twice as fast as anybody else. First, I read the beginning, and then I read the ending, and then I start in the middle and read toward whatever end I like best.”

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“A reader told me recently, in London, said that 'well, I read that you write the last sentence first, so I always read your last sentence first.' And I said, 'oh, no, you're not supposed to do that.”

John Irving (1942) American novelist and screenwriter

“I'm not a big fan of other people's punctuation. When I read a script I've got a sort of automatic eraser. I don't see punctuation or capitals or instructions. I want to decide when the sentence is over. Who's to say when a sentence ends and the other one begins? Sometimes it begins in the middle of the next sentence.”

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“Words create sentences; sentences create paragraphs; sometimes paragraphs quicken and begin to breathe.”

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“Tormented by the cursed ambition always to put a whole book in a page, a whole page in a sentence, and this sentence in a word. I am speaking of myself.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

“I have always suspected that the reading is right, which requires many words to prove it wrong; and the emendation wrong, that cannot without so much labour appear to be right.”

Samuel Johnson book The Plays of William Shakespeare

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“I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the word begin to move around. Stressed accents begin to invert. The word abandons its meaning like an overload which is too heavy and prevents dreaming. Then words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young. And the words wander away, looking in the nooks and crannies of vocabulary for new company, bad company.”

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“I would recommend it to the Masters of the Art Painting… to establish a better Method for the Education of their Scholars, and to begin their Instructions with the Technical Parts of Painting, before they let them loose to follow the Inventions of their own uncultivated Imaginations.”

Brook Taylor (1685–1731) English mathematician

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“When I begin to doubt my ability to work the word, I simply read another writer and know I have nothing to worry about. My contest is only with myself, to do it right, with power, and force, and delight, and gamble.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method.”

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James Thurber90

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