The Writer's Life: Who wrote: “The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future anybody’s guess”?

Answer: The great New York humorist, James Thurber. This is Thurber on genius, from his letters: “One of the things I most resent is the idiotic use of the word ‘genius’ for me, and when it came up… the other day I said I was a reporter with not enough genius to get off newspapers and make more than forty a week until I was thirty-two. Anybody with the slightest critical ability knows that a genius would not have to slave over his prose so long, or over his drawings so little.… First drafts of my pieces sound twelve years old and only get going on the fourth rewrite. I have never cut off an ear or stuck my hand in a fire…”