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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
Conditions
Writer
Waiting
Dies
Waits
Word
Ideal
Without
Putting
Work
Ideals
Paper

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In middle life, the human back is spoiling for a technical knockout and will use the flimsiest excuse, even a sneeze, to fall apart.
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Good deeds never go unpunished.
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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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As in the sexual experience, there are never more than two persons present in the act of reading-the writer, who is the impregnator, and the reader, who is the resspondent. This gives the experience of reading a sublimity and power unequalled by any other form of communication.
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Whatever else an American believes or disbelieves about himself, he is absolutely sure he has a sense of humor.
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Half a man's life is devoted to what he calls improvements, yet the original had some quality which is lost in the process.
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If I can fool a bug... I can surely fool a man. People are not as smart as bugs.
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Use the smallest word that does the job.
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Children hold spring so tightly in their brown fists-just as grownups, who are less sure of it, hold it in their hearts.
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I am reminded of the advice of my neighbor. Never worry about your heart till it stops beating.
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Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.
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I can still see my first dog. For six years he met me at the same place after school and convoyed me home - a service he thought up himself. A boy doesn't forget that sort of association.
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Have you ever found anything that gives you relief? Yes. A drink.
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If sometimes there seems to be a sort of sameness of sound in The New Yorker, it probably can be traced to the magazine's copydesk, which is a marvelous fortress of grammatical exactitude and stylish convention.
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new york provides not only a continuing excitation but also a spectacle that is continuing.
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Why is it, do you suppose, that an Englishman is unhappy until he has explained America?
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It sometimes takes days, even weeks, before a dog's nerves tire. In the case of terriers it can run into months.
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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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