“I called the other afternoon, at the laudanum hour, upon Bernard Hudley, the dramatist, and found him, to my astonishment, somewhat less despondent than he had been on my previous visit some months before. ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked anxiously. ‘Can I do anything to depress you?'”

– James Thurber, “Afternoon of a Playwright,” from Credos and Curios, a posthumously published collection of short pieces