In a free country it is the duty of writers to pay no attention to duty. — E. B. White Copy Share Image
The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. I rewrite a good deal to make it… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
I can only assume that your editorial writer tripped over the First Amendment and thought it was the office cat. — E. B. White Copy Share Image
Thurber did not write the way a surgeon operates, he wrote the way a child skips rope, the way a mouse waltzes. — E. B. White Copy Share Image
When a man hangs from a tree it doesn't spell justice unless he helped write the law that hanged him. — E. B. White Copy Share Image
The whole duty of a writer is to please and satisfy himself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
Writers do not merely reflect and interpret life, they inform and shape life. — E. B. White Copy Share Image
There is simply a better chance of doing well if the writer holds a steady course, enters the stream of English quietly,… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
A breezy style is often the work of an egocentric, the person who imagines that everything that pops into his head is… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
I always write a thing first and think about it afterward, which is not a bad procedure because the easiest way to… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that doesn't have a slant. All writing slants the way… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
In a free country it is the duty of writers to pay no attention to duty. Only under a dictatorship is literature… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
Writing is one way to go about thinking, and the practice and habit of writing not only drain the mind but supply… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
I have always felt that the first duty of a writer was to ascend - to make flights, carrying others along if… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
Place yourself in the background; write in a way that comes naturally; work from a suitable design; write with nouns and verbs;… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
My prose style at this time was a stomach-twisting blend of the Bible, Carl Sandburg, H.L. Mencken, Jeffrey Farnol, Christopher Morley, Samuel… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
When you consider that there are a thousand ways to express even the simplest idea, it is no wonder writers are under… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
I have just been refining the room in which I sit, yet I sometimes doubt that a writer should refine or improve… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
“...a writer has the duty to be good, not lousy; true, not false; lively, not dull; accurate, not full of error. He… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
In a sense the world dies every time a writer dies, because, if he is any good, he has been a wet… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
A writer should concern himself with whatever absorbs his fancy, stirs his heart, and unlimbers his typewriter. ... A writer has the… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
As in the sexual experience, there are never more than two persons present in the act of reading-the writer, who is the… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
Of course, it may be that the arts of writing and photography are antithetical. The hope and aim of a word-handler is… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
Being the owner of Dachshunds, to me a book on dog discipline becomes a volume of inspired humor. Every sentence is a… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
A writer is like a bean plant - he has his little day, and then gets stringy. — E. B. White Copy Share Image
Only a person who is congenially self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays — E. B. White Copy Share Image
It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. — E. B. White Copy Share Image
Although there is no substitute for merit in writing, clarity comes closest to being one. — E. B. White Copy Share Image
Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down. — E. B. White Copy Share Image
All writing is communication; creative writing is communication through revelation-it is the Self-escaping into the open. — E. B. White Copy Share Image
“To hear, in the short space of one week, a Scottish terrier booed by an audience and President Roosevelt criticized by Charles Lindbergh was… — E. B. White Copy Share
The sea answers all questions, and always in the same way; for when you read in the papers the interminable discussions and the bickering… — E. B. White Copy Share
New York blends the gift of privacy with the excitement of participation; and better than most dense communities it succeeds in insulating the individual… — E. B. White Copy Share
The terror of the atom age is not the violence of the new power but the speed of man's adjustment to it, the speed… — E. B. White Copy Share
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… — E. B. White Copy Share
Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human… — E. B. White Copy Share
Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down. — E. B. White Copy Share
A writer should concern himself with whatever absorbs his fancy, stirs his heart, and unlimbers his typewriter. ... A writer has the duty to… — E. B. White Copy Share
Every morning I awake torn between a desire to save the world and an inclination to savor it. This makes it hard to plan… — E. B. White Copy Share
I seldom went to bed before two or three o'clock in the morning, on the theory that if anything of interest were to happen… — E. B. White Copy Share
Necessity first mothered invention. Now invention has little ones of her own, and they look just like grandma. — E. B. White Copy Share
The bonus is really one of the great give-aways in business enterprise. It is the annual salve applied to the conscience of the rich… — E. B. White Copy Share
There's no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another. — E. B. White Copy Share
The critic leaves at curtain fall To find, in starting to review it, He scarcely saw the play at all For starting to review… — E. B. White Copy Share
