« All Writing Quotes · Elwyn Brooks White's Page
Writing Quotes by Elwyn Brooks White
- Write about it by day and dream about it by night.
- There is no satisfactory explanation of style, no infallible guide to good writing, no assurance that a person who thinks clearly will be able to…
- Use the smallest word that does the job.
- In dialogue, make sure that your attributives do not awkwardly interrupt a spoken sentence. Place them where the breath would come naturally in speech-that is,…
- I have always felt that the first duty of a writer was to ascend - to make flights, carrying others along if you can manage…
- Being the owner of Dachshunds, to me a book on dog discipline becomes a volume of inspired humor. Every sentence is a riot. Some day,…
- Only a person who is congenially self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays
- Writing is not an exercise in excision, it's a journey into sound.
- Writers do not merely reflect and interpret life, they inform and shape life.
- A man who publishes his letters becomes a nudist - nothing shields him from the world's gaze except his bare skin. A writer, writing away,…
- The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. Because I have the greatest respect for the reader, and if…
- All writing is communication; creative writing is communication through revelation-it is the Self-escaping into the open.
- I have no warm up exercises, other than to take an occasional drink.
- I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that does not have a slant. All writing slants the way a writer…
- The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.
- Shocking writing is like murder: the questions the jury must decide are the questions of motive and intent.
- 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…
- 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…
- In the nature of things, a person engaged in the flimsy business of expressing himself on paper is dependent on the large general privilege of…
- The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest.
More Writing Quotes
- Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it. — Hannah Arendt
- I grew up in a working-class family, so I guess you could say I write from what I know. — Andrea Arnold
- I started out in life as a poet; I was only writing poetry all through my 20s. It wasn't until I was… — Paul Auster
- I began writing at the age of 5, but there was a dark period between the ages of 8 and 16 when… — Margaret Atwood
- All through my writing life, I've had this impulse to write autobiographical works. — Paul Auster
- I write from my soul. This is the reason that critics don't hurt me, because it is me. If it was not… — Paulo Coelho
- It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art… — Wystan Hugh Auden
- Wilson was once asked how long it took him to write a speech. He answered, 'That depends. If I am to speak… — Woodrow Wilson