Quotes from E. B. White

Loneliness is a strange gift.

Shocking writing is like murder: the questions the jury must decide are the questions of motive and intent.

Somehow not only for ChristmasBut all the long year through,The joy that you give to othersIs the joy that comes back to you.

Television hangs on the questionable theory that whatever happens anywhere should be sensed everywhere. If everyone is going to be able to see everything, in the long run all sights may lose whatever rarity value they once possessed, and it may well turn out that people, being able to see and hear practically everything, will be specially interested in almost nothing.

The total collapse of the public opinion polls shows that this country is in good health. A country that developed an airtight system of finding out in advance what was in people's minds would be uninhabitable.

Weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society -- things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed.

You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that.

You have been my friends, replied Charlotte, that in itself is a tremendous thing...

Loneliness is a strange gift.

Writers do not merely reflect and interpret life, they inform and shape life.

Extreme cold when it first arrives seems to generate cheerfulness and sociability. For a few hours all life's dubious problems are dropped in favor of the clear and congenial task of keeping alive.

One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.

An unhatched egg is to me the greatest challenge in life.

Life's accumulation is more discouraging than life itself, when stirred up.

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.

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.

The time not to become a father is eighteen years before a war.

Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down.

Books hold most of the secrets of the world, most of the thoughts that men and women have had. And when you are reading a book, you and the author are alone together-just the two of you.

Life's meaning has always eluded me and I guess always will. But I love it just the same.

Children are game for anything. I throw them hard words, and they backhand them over the net. They love words that give them a hard time, provided they are in a context that absorbs their attention.

All we need is a meteorologist who has once been soaked to the skin without ill effect. No one can write knowingly of the weather who walks bent over on wet days.

A writer is like a bean plant - he has his little day, and then gets stringy.

I can only assume that your editorial writer tripped over the First Amendment and thought it was the office cat.