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It seemed to me that I should have a desk, even though I had no real need for a desk. I was afraid that if I had no desk in my room my life would seem too haphazard.
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
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Rooms
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Though
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More quotes by 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
Early summer days are a jubilee time for birds. In the fields, around the house, in the barn, in the woods, in the swamp - everywhere love and songs and nests and eggs.
E. B. White
A “fraternity” is the antithesis offraternity. The first (that is, the order or organization) is predicated on the idea of exclusion the second (that is, the abstract thing) is based on a feeling of total equality.
E. B. White
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
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
The living language is like a cowpath: it is the creation of the cows themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart from it according to their whims or their needs. From daily use, the path undergoes change. A cow is under no obligation to stay
E. B. White
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
Creation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions.
E. B. White
It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.
E. B. White
A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word to paper.
E. B. White
I discovered, though, that once having given a pig an enema there is no turning back, no chance of resuming one of life's more stereotyped roles.
E. B. White
You have been my friends. That in itself is a tremendous thing.
E. B. White
A good many of the special words of business seem designed more to express the user's dreams than to express a precise meaning.
E. B. White
Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.
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
I believe in dreams. People should have faith in the songs poets sing.
E. B. White
It is easier for a man to be loyal to his club than to his planet the bylaws are shorter, and he is personally acquainted with the other members.
E. B. White
Why is it, do you suppose, that an Englishman is unhappy until he has explained America?
E. B. White
Geese are friends to no one, they bad mouth everybody and everything. But they are companionable once you get used to their ingratitude and false accusations.
E. B. White
In every queen there's a touch of floozy.
E. B. White