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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
Writing
Rewrite
Thing
Editing
Trying
Main
Make
Clearly
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Clear
Write

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You have been my friends. That in itself is a tremendous thing.
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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.
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Humour plays close to the big, hot fire, which is the truth, and the reader feels the heat.
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All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world.
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I have just been refining the room in which I sit, yet I sometimes doubt that a writer should refine or improve his workroom by so much as a dictionary: one thing leads to another and the first thing you know he has a stuffed chair and is fast asleep in it.
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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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Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion.
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We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry.
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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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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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Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people-- people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.
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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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Advice to young writers wo want to get ahead without any annoying delays: don't write about Man, write about a man.
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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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A writer is like a bean plant - he has his little day, and then gets stringy.
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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.
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I can still see my first dog. For six years he met me at the same place after school and convoyed me home - a service he thought up himself. A boy doesn't forget that sort of association.
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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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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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I would really rather feel bad in Maine than feel good anywhere else
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