Quote

Sometimes a writer, like an acrobat, must try a trick that is too much for him.

E. B. White

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Sometimes
Must
Trying
Much
Like
Acrobat
Trick
Tricks

More quotes by E. B. White

Image
Writers do not merely reflect and interpret life, they inform and shape life.
E. B. White
Image
Not even a collapsing world looks dark to a man who is about to make his fortune.
E. B. White
Image
When you say something, make sure you have said it. The chances of your having said it are only fair.
E. B. White
Image
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.
E. B. White
Image
The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.
E. B. White
Image
Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.
E. B. White
Image
I have a spaniel that defrocked a nun last week. He took hold of the cord. I had hold of the leash. It was like elephants holding tails. Imagine me undressing a nun, even second hand.
E. B. White
Image
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.
E. B. White
Image
When a man hangs from a tree it doesn't spell justice unless he helped write the law that hanged him.
E. B. White
Image
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.
E. B. White
Image
Creation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions.
E. B. White
Image
The trouble with the profit system has always been that it was highly unprofitable to most people.
E. B. White
Image
No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader's intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.
E. B. White
Image
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.
E. B. White
Image
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
Image
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.
E. B. White
Image
From three to four, he planned to stand perfectly still and think of what it was like to be alive.
E. B. White
Image
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?
E. B. White
Image
It is at a fair that man can be drunk forever on liquor, love, or fights at a fair that your front pocket can be picked by a trotting horse looking for sugar, and your hind pocket by a thief looking for his fortune.
E. B. White
Image
Even now with a thousand little voyages notched in my belt. I still feel a memorial chill on casting off.
E. B. White