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. WHITEA writer’s style reveals something of his spirit, his habits, his capacites, his bias…it is the Self escaping into the open.
More E. B. White Quotes
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“What are they, and where are you?” screamed Wilbur. “Please, please, tell me where you are. And what are salutations?” “Salutations are greetings,” said the voice. “When I say ‘salutations,’ it’s just my fancy way of saying hello or good morning.
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.
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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 -
Democracy is itself, a religious faith. For some it comes close to being the only formal religion they have.
E. B. WHITE -
Mother: It’s broccoli, dear. — Child: I say it’s spinach, and I say the hell with it.
E. B. WHITE -
Geese are friends to no one, they bad mouth everybody and everything. But they are companionable once you get used to their ingratitude and false accusations.
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I am still encouraged to go on. I wouldn’t know where else to go.
E. B. WHITE -
You’re terrific as far as I am concerned.
E. B. WHITE -
The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.
E. B. WHITE -
In a free country it is the duty of writers to pay no attention to duty.
E. B. WHITE -
Safety is all well and good: I prefer freedom.
E. B. WHITE -
There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter.
E. B. WHITE -
I am always humbled by the infite ingenuity of the Lord, who can make a red barn cast a blue shadow.
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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.
E. B. WHITE -
Before the seed there comes the thought of bloom.
E. B. WHITE