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Writers do not merely reflect and interpret life, they inform and shape life.
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
Shape
Merely
Shapes
Writers
Writing
Life
Inform
Interpret
Reflect
More quotes by E. B. White
The trouble with the profit system has always been that it was highly unprofitable to most people.
E. B. White
America is now liberty-conscious. In a single generation it has progressed from being toothbrush-conscious, to being air-minded, to being liberty-conscious.
E. B. White
A man who publishes his letters becomes a nudist - nothing shields him from the world's gaze except his bare skin. A writer, writing away, can always fix things up to make himself more presentable, but a man who has written a letter is stuck with it for all time.
E. B. White
A poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning.
E. B. White
In a man's middle years there is scarcely a part of the body he would hesitate to turn over to the proper authorities.
E. B. White
Books are the door of escape from the forest.
E. B. White
Sometimes a writer, like an acrobat, must try a trick that is too much for him.
E. B. White
The vision of milk and honey, it comes and goes. But the odor of cooking goes on forever.
E. B. White
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.
E. B. White
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
In every queen there's a touch of floozy.
E. B. White
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.
E. B. White
Creation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions.
E. B. White
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.
E. B. White
From three to four, he planned to stand perfectly still and think of what it was like to be alive.
E. B. White
I don't understand it, and I don't like what I don't understand.
E. B. White
The beginner should approach style warily, realizing that it is himself he is approaching, no other and he should begin by turning resolutely away from all devices that are popularly believed to indicate style - all mannerisms, tricks, adornments. The approach to style is by way of plainness, simplicity, orderliness, sincerity.
E. B. White
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.
E. B. White
The rat had no morals, no conscience, no scruples, no consideration, no decency, no milk of rodent kindness, no compunctions, no higher feeling, no friendliness, no anything
E. B. White
A schoolchild should be taught grammar - for the same reason that a medical student should study anatomy. Having learned about the exciting mysteries of an English sentence, the child can then go forth and speak and write any damn way he pleases.
E. B. White
