Make the work interesting and the discipline will take care of itself.
E. B. WHITESemi-colons only prove that the author has been to college.
More E. B. White Quotes
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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.
E. B. WHITE -
Trust me, Wilbur. People are very gullible. They’ll believe anything they see in print.
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 -
The whole duty of a writer is to please and satisfy himself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one.
E. B. WHITE -
An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do but who has escaped the terrible desire to write.
E. B. WHITE -
A despot doesn’t fear eloquent writers preaching freedom- he fears a drunken poet who may crack a joke that will take hold.
E. B. WHITE -
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.
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 writer’s style reveals something of his spirit, his habits, his capacites, his bias…it is the Self escaping into the open.
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 -
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.
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 -
No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.
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 -
I am reminded of the advice of my neighbor. “Never worry about your heart till it stops beating.
E. B. WHITE