I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all.
E. B. WHITELife is like writing with a pen. You can cross out your past but you can’t erase it.
More E. B. White Quotes
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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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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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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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All writing is communication; creative writing is communication through revelation-it is the Self-escaping into the open.
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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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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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When you say something, make sure you have said it. The chances of your having said it are only fair.
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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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Writing is hard work and bad for the health.
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I don’t know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.
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A poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning.
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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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English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education – sometimes it’s sheer luck, like getting across the street.
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No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.
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Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.
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Writing is both mask and unveiling.
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From 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.
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I believe in dreams. People should have faith in the songs poets sing.
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You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what’s a life, anyway?
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Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.
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Nationalism has two fatal charms for its devotees: It presupposes local self-sufficiency, which is a pleasant and desirable condition, and it suggests, very subtly, a certain personal superiority by reason of one’s belonging to a place which is definable and familiar, as against a place that is strange, remote.
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To achieve style, begin by affecting none.
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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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Safety is all well and good: I prefer freedom.
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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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Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car.
E. B. WHITE