410 Quotes by E.B. White

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But 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.

Safety is all well and good: I prefer freedom.

After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die.

Trust me, Wilbur. People are very gullible. They'll believe anything they see in print.

A library is a good place to go when you feel unhappy, for there, in a book, you may find encouragement and comfort. 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. Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people - people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book."[Letters of Note; Troy (MI, USA) Public Library, 1971]

All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world.

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

Writing is both mask and unveiling.

There is nothing harder to estimate than a writer's time, nothing harder to keep track of. There are moments—moments of sustained creation—when his time is fairly valuable; and there are hours and hours when a writer's time isn't worth the paper he is not writing anything on.