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. WHITEI have noticed that most men when they enter a barber shop and must wait their turn, drop into a chair and pick up a magazine. I simply sit down and pick up the thread of my sea wanderings, which began more than fifty years ago and is not quite ended.
More E. B. White Quotes
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In a free country it is the duty of writers to pay no attention to duty.
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Reading is the work of the alert mind, is demanding, and under ideal conditions produces finally a sort of ecstasy.
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Mother: It’s broccoli, dear. — Child: I say it’s spinach, and I say the hell with it.
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Stuart rose from the ditch, climbed into his car, and started up the road that led toward the north…As he peeked ahead into the great land that stretched before him, the way seemed long. But the sky was bright, and he somehow felt he was headed in the right direction.
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In every queen there’s a touch of floozy.
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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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I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
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A writer’s style reveals something of his spirit, his habits, his capacites, his bias…it is the Self escaping into the open.
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People are, if anything, more touchy about being thought silly than they are about being thought unjust.
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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.
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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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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.
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I don’t know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.
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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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Why did you do all this for me?’ he asked. ‘I don’t deserve it. I’ve never done anything for you.’ ‘You have been my friend,’ replied Charlotte. ‘That in itself is a tremendous thing.
E. B. WHITE