An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do but who has escaped the terrible desire to write.
E. B. WHITEThe essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest.
More E. B. White Quotes
-
-
Writing is hard work and bad for the health.
E. B. WHITE -
No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.
E. B. WHITE -
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.
E. B. WHITE -
I get up every morning determined to both change the world and to have one hell of a good time. Sometimes, this makes planning the day difficult.
E. B. WHITE -
Semi-colons only prove that the author has been to college.
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 candidate could easily commit political suicide if he were to come up with an unconventional thought during a presidential tour.
E. B. WHITE -
Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.
E. B. WHITE -
We’re born, we live a little while, we die. A spider’s life can’t help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. 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.
E. B. WHITE -
A right is a responsibility in reverse.
E. B. WHITE -
If a man is to be obsessed by something, I suppose a boat is as good as anything, perhaps a bit better than most.
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 schoolchild should be taught grammar-for the same reason that a medical student should study anatomy.
E. B. WHITE -
Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.
E. B. WHITE -
I don’t know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.
E. B. WHITE






