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Deathlessness should be arrived at in a... haphazard fashion. Loving fame as much as any man, we shall carve our initials in the shell of a tortoise and turn him loose in a peat bog.

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
Much
Loose
Tortoise
Men
Loving
Tortoises
Fame
Haphazard
Fashion
Carve
Turn
Initials
Shall
Shell
Turns
Arrived
Peat
Death
Shells
Bogs

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Even now with a thousand little voyages notched in my belt. I still feel a memorial chill on casting off.
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A writer is like a bean plant - he has his little day, and then gets stringy.
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Necessity first mothered invention. Now invention has little ones of her own, and they look just like grandma.
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New York is part of the natural world. I love the city, I love the country, and for the same reasons. The city is part of the country. When I had an apartment on East Forty-Eighth Street, my backyard during the migratory season yielded more birds than I ever saw in Maine.
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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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Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.
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A candidate could easily commit political suicide if he were to come up with an unconventional thought during a presidential tour.
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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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It isn't silence you can cut with a knife any more, it's interchange of ideas. Intelligent discussion of practically everything is what is breaking up modern marriage.
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Television should be our Lyceum, our Chautauqua, our Minsky's and our Camelot.
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There is another sort of day which needs celebrating in song -- the day of days when spring at last holds up her face to be kissed, deliberate and unabashed. On that day no wind blows either in the hills or in the mind.
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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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In a free country it is the duty of writers to pay no attention to duty. Only under a dictatorship is literature expected to exhibit an harmonious design or an inspirational tone.
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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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In a man's middle years there is scarcely a part of the body he would hesitate to turn over to the proper authorities.
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Safety is all well and good: I prefer freedom.
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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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Writing is both mask and unveiling.
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A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word to paper.
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Well,” said Stuart, “a misspelled word is an abomination in the sight of everyone.
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