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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

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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
Book
Seemed
Restless
Sometimes
Except
Sail
Must
Usually
Cracks
Writing
Rather
Literary
Really
Read
Fellow
Never
Living
Boat
Indoors
Would
Write
Curiosity
Lively
Order
Fellows
Crack

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I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
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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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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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Never hurry and never worry!
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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?
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We grow tyrannical fighting tyranny. . . . The most alarming spectacle today is not the spectacle of the atomic bomb in an unfederated world, it is the spectacle of the Americans beginning to accept the device of loyalty oaths and witch hunts, beginning to call anybody they don't like a Communist.
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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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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
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I don't understand it, and I don't like what I don't understand.
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Habitually creative people are prepared to be lucky.
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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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Creation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions.
E. B. White
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I believe television is going to be the test of the modern world, and that in this new opportunity to see beyond the range of our vision, we shall discover a new and unbearable disturbance of the modern peace, or a saving radiance in the sky. We shall stand or fall by television - of that I am quite sure.
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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
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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.
E. B. White
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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.
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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.
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A library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there in a book, you may have your question answered
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Although there is no substitute for merit in writing, clarity comes closest to being one.
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There is no trick to it. If you like to write and want to write, you write, no matter where you are or what else you are doing or whether anyone pays any heed.
E. B. White