Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.
E. B. WHITEBe obscure clearly! Be wild of tongue in a way we can understand.
More E. B. White Quotes
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There’s no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another.
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No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.
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The city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something.
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There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter.
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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.
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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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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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A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word to paper.
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I don’t know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.
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If a man is to be obsessed by something, I suppose a boat is as good as anything, perhaps a bit better than most.
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Reading is the work of the alert mind, is demanding, and under ideal conditions produces finally a sort of ecstasy.
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Books hold most of the secrets of the world, most of the thoughts that men and women have had. And when you are reading a book, you and the author are alone together-just the two of you.
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Never hurry and never worry!
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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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Before the seed there comes the thought of bloom.
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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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The whole problem is to establish communication with ones self.
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People are, if anything, more touchy about being thought silly than they are about being thought unjust.
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The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.
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The whole duty of a writer is to please and satisfy himself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one.
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You can dissect a joke just as you can a frog. But it tends to die on you.
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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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One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.
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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.
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Only a person who is congenially self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays
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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.
E. B. WHITE