An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do but who has escaped the terrible desire to write.
E. B. WHITEYou’re terrific as far as I am concerned.
More E. B. White Quotes
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Mother: It’s broccoli, dear. — Child: I say it’s spinach, and I say the hell with it.
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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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I am reminded of the advice of my neighbor. “Never worry about your heart till it stops beating.
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To achieve style, begin by affecting none.
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I don’t know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.
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Use the smallest word that does the job.
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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 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 have one share in corporate Earth, and I am nervous about the management.
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A right is a responsibility in reverse.
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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.
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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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Loneliness is a strange gift.
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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.
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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.
E. B. WHITE