No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.
E. B. WHITEWe should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry.
More E. B. White Quotes
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Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car.
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Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts.
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A right is a responsibility in reverse.
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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.
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A despot doesn’t fear eloquent writers preaching freedom- he fears a drunken poet who may crack a joke that will take hold.
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In every queen there’s a touch of floozy.
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Wilbur never forgot Charlotte. Although he loved her children and grandchildren dearly, none of the new spiders ever quite took her place in his heart. She was in a class by herself. It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.
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We’re born, we live a little while, we die. A spider’s life can’t help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.
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A writer should concern himself with whatever absorbs his fancy, stirs his heart, and unlimbers his typewriter. … A writer has the duty to be good, not lousy: true, not false; lively, not dull; accurate, not full of error. He should tend to lift people up, not lower them down.
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Creation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions.
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There is nothing harder to estimate than a writer’s time, nothing harder to keep track of. There are moments—moments of sustained creation—when his time is fairly valuable; and there are hours and hours when a writer’s time isn’t worth the paper he is not writing anything on.
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I believe in dreams. People should have faith in the songs poets sing.
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Understanding humor is like dissecting a live frog. It can be done, but the frog tends to die in the process.
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Old age is a special problem for me because I’ve never been able to shed the mental image I have of myself – a lad of about 19.
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Semi-colons only prove that the author has been to college.
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Television will enormously enlarge the eye’s range, and, like radio, will advertise the Elsewhere. Together with the tabs, the mags, and the movies, it will insist that we forget the primary and the near in favor of the secondary and the remote.
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I have one share in corporate Earth, and I am nervous about the management.
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“What’s miraculous about a spider’s web?” said Mrs. Arable. “I don’t see why you say a web is a miracle–it’s just a web.” “Ever try to spin one?” asked Mr. Dorian.
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Life’s meaning has always eluded me and I guess always will. But I love it just the same.
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Good deeds never go unpunished.
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I am often mad, but I would hate to be nothing but mad: and I think I would lose what little value I may have as a writer if I were to refuse, as a matter of principle, to accept the warming rays of the sun, and to report them, whenever, and if ever, they
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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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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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Oh, I never look under the hood.
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Habitually creative people are prepared to be lucky.
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Mother: It’s broccoli, dear. — Child: I say it’s spinach, and I say the hell with it.
E. B. WHITE