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Advice to young writers wo want to get ahead without any annoying delays: don't write about Man, write about a man.

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
Young
Without
Delays
Writing
Delay
Men
Annoying
Ahead
Writers
Advice
Write

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In order to read one must sit down, usually indoors. I am restless and would rather sail a boat than crack a book. I've never had a very lively literary curiosity, and it has sometimes seemed to me that I am not really a literary fellow at all. Except that I write for a living.
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Television will enormously enlarge the eye's range, and, like radio, will advertise the Elsewhere. Together with the tabs, the mags, and the movies, it will insist that we forget the primary and the near in favor of the secondary and the remote.
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Don't write about Man write about a man.
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A right is a responsibility in reverse.
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New York blends the gift of privacy with the excitement of participation and better than most dense communities it succeeds in insulating the individual (if he wants it, and almost everybody wants or needs it) against all enormous and violent and wonderful events that are taking place every minute.
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When a man hangs from a tree it doesn't spell justice unless he helped write the law that hanged him.
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The world likes humor, but it treats it patronizingly. It decorates its serious artists with laurel, and its wags with Brussels sprouts.
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... with men it's rush, rush, rush, every minute. I'm glad I'm a sedentary spider. What does sedentary mean? asked Wilbur. Means I sit still a good part of the time and don't go wandering all over creation. I know a good thing when I see it, and my web is a good thing. I stay put and wait for what comes. Gives me a chance to think.
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There is no trick to it. If you like to write and want to write, you write, no matter where you are or what else you are doing or whether anyone pays any heed.
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From three to four, he planned to stand perfectly still and think of what it was like to be alive.
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Old age is a special problem for me because I've never been able to shed the mental image I have of myself - a lad of about 19.
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Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts.
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When you say something, make sure you have said it. The chances of your having said it are only fair.
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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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Safety is all well and good: I prefer freedom.
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You're terrific as far as I am concerned.
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I am always humbled by the infite ingenuity of the Lord, who can make a red barn cast a blue shadow.
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But we have received a sign, Edith - a mysterious sign. A miracle has happened on this farm... in the middle of the web there were the words 'Some Pig'... we have no ordinary pig. Well, said Mrs. Zuckerman, it seems to me you're a little off. It seems to me we have no ordinary spider.
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Although there is no substitute for merit in writing, clarity comes closest to being one.
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Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.
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