Quotes from E.B. White

A poet dares be just so clear and no clearer... He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.

Hope is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time.

An intelligence service is, in fact, a stupidity service.

I think poetry is the greatest of the arts. It combines music and painting and story-telling and prophecy and the dance. It is religious in tone, scientific in attitude. A true poem contains the seed of wonder...

A poem compresses much in a tight space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning.

Inner thought: it is easier to make rhymes on a train; the lines come out the right length because the wheel clicks never miss their count. Idea: if we were a poet we would spend all our time on trains.

To confront death, in any guise, is to identify with the victim and face what is unsettling and sobering

Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.