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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

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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
Clear
Write
Writing
Rewrite
Thing
Editing
Trying
Main
Make
Clearly
Good
Deal
Deals

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I have one share in corporate Earth, and I am nervous about the management.
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I am still encouraged to go on. I wouldn't know where else to go.
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Sometimes a writer, like an acrobat, must try a trick that is too much for him.
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From morning till night, sounds drift from the kitchen, most of them familiar and comforting. . . . On days when warmth is the most important need of the human heart, the kitchen is the place you can find it it dries the wet sock, it cools the hot little brain.
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Safety is all well and good: I prefer freedom.
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Democracy is a request from a War Board, in the middle of a morning in the middle of a war, wanting to know what democracy is.
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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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It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.
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I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all.
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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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Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion.
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Why did you do all this for me?' he asked. 'I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you.' 'You have been my friend,' replied Charlotte. 'That in itself is a tremendous thing.
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Writing is both mask and unveiling.
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Good deeds never go unpunished.
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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.
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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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The critic leaves at curtain fall To find, in starting to review it, He scarcely saw the play at all For starting to review it.
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New York is to the nation what the white church spire is to the village - the visible symbol of aspiration and faith, the white plume saying the way is up!
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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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A poet dares to be just so clear and no clearer he approaches lucid ground warily, like a mariner who is determined not to scrape his bottom on anything solid. A poet's pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.
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