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. WHITEThe best writing is rewriting.
More E. B. White Quotes
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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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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.
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Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.
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Use the smallest word that does the job.
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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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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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Writing is both mask and unveiling.
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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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When I get sick of what men do, I have only to walk a few steps in another direction to see what spiders do. Or what the weather does. This sustains me very well indeed.
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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.
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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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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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A candidate could easily commit political suicide if he were to come up with an unconventional thought during a presidential tour.
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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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You’re terrific as far as I am concerned.
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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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Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people– people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.
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Salutations; it’s just my fancy way of saying hello or good morning
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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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Every morning I awake torn between a desire to save the world and an inclination to savor it. This makes it hard to plan the day. But if we forget to savor the world, what possible reason do we have for saving it? In a way, the savoring must come first.
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No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.
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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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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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Children are game for anything. I throw them hard words, and they backhand them over the net. They love words that give them a hard time, provided they are in a context that absorbs their attention.
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Creation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions.
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Trust me, Wilbur. People are very gullible. They’ll believe anything they see in print.
E. B. WHITE