I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all.
E. B. WHITEI believe in dreams. People should have faith in the songs poets sing.
More E. B. White Quotes
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It is quite possible that an animal has spoken to me and that I didn’t catch the remark because I wasn’t paying attention.
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 -
You can dissect a joke just as you can a frog. But it tends to die on you.
E. B. WHITE -
The so-called science of poll-taking is not a science at all but mere necromancy. People are unpredictable by nature, and although you can take a nation’s pulse, you can’t be sure that the nation hasn’t just run up a flight of stairs.
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 -
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 -
I’ve got a new friend, all right. But what a gamble friendship is! Charlotte is fierce, brutal, scheming, bloodthirsty-everything I don’t like. How can I learn to like her, even though she is pretty and, of course, clever?
E. B. WHITE -
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.
E. B. WHITE -
Writing is one way to go about thinking, and the practice and habit of writing not only drain the mind but supply it, too.
E. B. WHITE -
Trust me, Wilbur. People are very gullible. They’ll believe anything they see in print.
E. B. WHITE -
The whole problem is to establish communication with ones self.
E. B. WHITE -
I am still encouraged to go on. I wouldn’t know where else to go.
E. B. WHITE -
In a free country it is the duty of writers to pay no attention to duty.
E. B. WHITE -
I am always humbled by the infite ingenuity of the Lord, who can make a red barn cast a blue shadow.
E. B. WHITE -
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.
E. B. WHITE