Thurber did not write the way a surgeon operates, he wrote the way a child skips rope, the way a mouse waltzes.
I was so lucky that I didn't have anyone to copy, be impressed by. I had developed my own style, I was creating before I knew there was a Thurber, a Benchley, a Price and a Steinberg. I never saw their work until I was around thirty.
I never quite know when I'm not writing. Sometimes my wife comes up to me at a party and says, "Dammit, Thurber, stop writing. " She usually catches me in the middle of a paragraph.