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James Geary

James Geary is the author of Wit's End: What Wit Is, How It Works, and Why We Need It, I Is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How It Shapes the Way We See the World, Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists, the New York Times bestseller The World in a Phrase: A Brief History of the Aphorism, and The Body Electric: An Anatomy of The New Bionic Senses. He is the deputy curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, editor of Nieman Reports, and former editor of the European edition of Time magazine.


“Why must an aphorism be brief?Because only a fool gives a speech in a burning house.”
James Geary
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“You only really discover the strength of your spine when your back is against the wall.”
James Geary
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“For life is short and the art of writing books is very, very long.”
James Geary
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