There is hardly a waiting room in the east that has not served as my cockpit, whether I was waiting to board a train or to see a dentist. And I am usually still trimming sheets when the train starts or drill begins to whine.
E. B. WHITEWhen you say something, make sure you have said it. The chances of your having said it are only fair.
More E. B. White Quotes
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It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill him, depending a good deal on luck.
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Children are game for anything. I throw them hard words, and they backhand them over the net. They love words that give them a hard time, provided they are in a context that absorbs their attention.
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Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.
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I’ve got a new friend, all right. But what a gamble friendship is! Charlotte is fierce, brutal, scheming, bloodthirsty-everything I don’t like. How can I learn to like her, even though she is pretty and, of course, clever?
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A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word to paper.
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Why did you do all this for me?’ he asked. ‘I don’t deserve it. I’ve never done anything for you.’ ‘You have been my friend,’ replied Charlotte. ‘That in itself is a tremendous thing.
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From morning till night, sounds drift from the kitchen, most of them familiar and comforting. . . . On days when warmth is the most important need of the human heart, the kitchen is the place you can find it; it dries the wet sock, it cools the hot little brain.
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Writing is hard work and bad for the health.
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A candidate could easily commit political suicide if he were to come up with an unconventional thought during a presidential tour.
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I am reminded of the advice of my neighbor. “Never worry about your heart till it stops beating.
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Writing is both mask and unveiling.
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No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.
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English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education – sometimes it’s sheer luck, like getting across the street.
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An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do but who has escaped the terrible desire to write.
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There is nothing more likely to start disagreement among people or countries than an agreement.
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Most people think of peace as a state of Nothing Bad Happening, or Nothing Much Happening. Yet if peace is to overtake us and make us the gift of serenity and well-being, it will have to be the state of Something Good Happening.
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When an American family becomes separated from its toothbrushes and combs and pajamas for a few hours it considers that it has had quite an adventure.
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Early summer days are a jubilee time for birds. In the fields, around the house, in the barn, in the woods, in the swamp – everywhere love and songs and nests and eggs.
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Semi-colons only prove that the author has been to college.
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Make the work interesting and the discipline will take care of itself.
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Creation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions.
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You’re terrific as far as I am concerned.
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Nauseous. Nauseated. The first means “sickening to contemplate”; the second means “sick at the stomach.” Do not, therefore, say “I feel nauseous,” unless you are sure you have that effect on others.
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I don’t know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.
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Nationalism has two fatal charms for its devotees: It presupposes local self-sufficiency, which is a pleasant and desirable condition, and it suggests, very subtly, a certain personal superiority by reason of one’s belonging to a place which is definable and familiar, as against a place that is strange, remote.
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A poet dares be just so clear and no clearer… He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.
E. B. WHITE