Writing is both mask and unveiling.
E. B. WHITEBy helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.
More E. B. White Quotes
-
-
Nauseous. Nauseated. The first means “sickening to contemplate”; the second means “sick at the stomach.” Do not, therefore, say “I feel nauseous,” unless you are sure you have that effect on others.
E. B. WHITE -
We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry.
E. B. WHITE -
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.
E. B. WHITE -
A right is a responsibility in reverse.
E. B. WHITE -
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 -
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 -
When you say something, make sure you have said it. The chances of your having said it are only fair.
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 -
Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.
E. B. WHITE -
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.
E. B. WHITE -
No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.
E. B. WHITE -
When an American family becomes separated from its toothbrushes and combs and pajamas for a few hours it considers that it has had quite an adventure.
E. B. WHITE -
People are, if anything, more touchy about being thought silly than they are about being thought unjust.
E. B. WHITE -
There’s no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another.
E. B. WHITE -
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.
E. B. WHITE