All writing is communication; creative writing is communication through revelation-it is the Self-escaping into the open.
E. B. WHITECreation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions.
More E. B. White Quotes
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An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do but who has escaped the terrible desire to write.
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 -
I am always humbled by the infite ingenuity of the Lord, who can make a red barn cast a blue shadow.
E. B. WHITE -
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 poet dares be just so clear and no clearer… He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.
E. B. WHITE -
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
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 rat had no morals, no conscience, no scruples, no consideration, no decency, no milk of rodent kindness, no compunctions, no higher feeling, no friendliness, no anything
E. B. WHITE -
I am reminded of the advice of my neighbor. “Never worry about your heart till it stops beating.
E. B. WHITE -
A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word to paper.
E. B. WHITE -
There is hardly a waiting room in the east that has not served as my cockpit, whether I was waiting to board a train or to see a dentist. And I am usually still trimming sheets when the train starts or drill begins to whine.
E. B. WHITE -
The best writing is rewriting.
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 -
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 -
In a free country it is the duty of writers to pay no attention to duty.
E. B. WHITE