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A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word to paper.

E. B. White

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E. B. White
Age: 86 †
Born: 1899
Born: July 11
Died: 1985
Died: October 1
Editor
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Mount Vernon
New York
Elwyn Brooks White
E.B. White
Writer
Waiting
Dies
Waits
Word
Ideal
Without
Putting
Work
Ideals
Paper
Conditions

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The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.
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The whole duty of a writer is to please and satisfy himself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one.
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The vision of milk and honey, it comes and goes. But the odor of cooking goes on forever.
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Writing is both mask and unveiling.
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America is now liberty-conscious. In a single generation it has progressed from being toothbrush-conscious, to being air-minded, to being liberty-conscious.
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The circus comes as close to being the world in microcosm as anything I know in a way, it puts all the rest of show business in the shade.
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My prose style at this time was a stomach-twisting blend of the Bible, Carl Sandburg, H.L. Mencken, Jeffrey Farnol, Christopher Morley, Samuel Pepys, and Franklin Pierce Adams imitating Samuel Pepys. I was quite apt to throw in a bless the mark at any spot, and to begin a sentence with Lord comma.
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Semi-colons only prove that the author has been to college.
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Home was quite a place when people stayed there.
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Never hurry and never worry!
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Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.
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A breezy style is often the work of an egocentric, the person who imagines that everything that pops into his head is of general interest and that uninhibited prose creates high spirits and carries the day.
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When my wife's Aunt Caroline was in her nineties, she lived with us, and she once remarked: 'Remembrance is sufficient of the beauty we have seen.' I cherish the remembrance of the beauty I have seen. I cherish the grave, compulsive word.
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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?
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I have always felt that the first duty of a writer was to ascend - to make flights, carrying others along if you can manage it. To do this takes courage, even a certain conceit.
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Life is always rich and steady time when you are waiting for something to happen or to hatch.
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I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.
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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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A right is a responsibility in reverse.
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Why is it, do you suppose, that an Englishman is unhappy until he has explained America?
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