“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.
E. B. WHITEFrom 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.
More E. B. White Quotes
-
-
Safety is all well and good: I prefer freedom.
E. B. WHITE -
Before the seed there comes the thought of bloom.
E. B. WHITE -
Writing is both mask and unveiling.
E. B. WHITE -
Trust me, Wilbur. People are very gullible. They’ll believe anything they see in print.
E. B. WHITE -
Extreme cold when it first arrives seems to generate cheerfulness and sociability. For a few hours all life’s dubious problems are dropped in favor of the clear and congenial task of keeping alive.
E. B. WHITE -
I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
E. B. WHITE -
It is Sunday, mid-morning-Sunday in the living room, Sunday in the kitchen, Sunday in the woodshed, Sunday down the road in the village: I hear the bells, calling me to share God’s grace.
E. B. WHITE -
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.
E. B. WHITE -
When I get sick of what men do, I have only to walk a few steps in another direction to see what spiders do. Or what the weather does. This sustains me very well indeed.
E. B. WHITE -
The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.
E. B. WHITE -
A poet’s pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it.
E. B. WHITE -
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.
E. B. WHITE -
I don’t know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.
E. B. WHITE -
Reading is the work of the alert mind, is demanding, and under ideal conditions produces finally a sort of ecstasy.
E. B. WHITE -
A right is a responsibility in reverse.
E. B. WHITE -
Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people– people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.
E. B. WHITE -
Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.
E. B. WHITE -
Life is like writing with a pen. You can cross out your past but you can’t erase it.
E. B. WHITE -
Oh, I never look under the hood.
E. B. WHITE -
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.
E. B. WHITE -
The world is full of people who have never, since childhood, met an open doorway with an open mind.
E. B. WHITE -
The best writing is rewriting.
E. B. WHITE -
The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest.
E. B. WHITE -
Fern was up at daylight, trying to rid the world of injustice. As a result, she now has a pig. A small one to be sure, but nevertheless a pig. It just shows what can happen if a person gets out of bed promptly.
E. B. WHITE -
When you say something, make sure you have said it. The chances of your having said it are only fair.
E. B. WHITE -
Mother: It’s broccoli, dear. — Child: I say it’s spinach, and I say the hell with it.
E. B. WHITE