E. B. White
E. B. White
Elwyn Brooks "E. B." White was an American writer. He was a contributor to The New Yorker magazine and a co-author of the English language style guide The Elements of Style, which is commonly known as "Strunk & White". He also wrote books for children, including Stuart Little, Charlotte's Web, and The Trumpet of the Swan. Charlotte's Web was voted the top children's novel in a 2012 survey of School Library Journal readers, an accomplishment repeated in earlier surveys...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth11 July 1899
CountryUnited States of America
writing weather skins
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.
queens
In every queen there's a touch of floozy.
country design attention
In a free country it is the duty of writers to pay no attention to duty. Only under a dictatorship is literature expected to exhibit an harmonious design or an inspirational tone.
death littles birth
After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die.
mean thinking would-be
What do you mean less than nothing? I don't think there is any such thing as less than nothing. Nothing is absolutely the limit of nothingness. It's the lowest you can go. It's the end of the line. How can something be less than nothing? If there were something that was less than nothing, then nothing would not be nothing, it would be something - even though it's just a very little bit of something. But if nothing is nothing, then nothing has nothing that is less than it is.
girl knowing giving
This is what youth must figure out: Girls, love, and living. The having, the not having, The spending and giving, And the meloncholy time of not knowing. This is what age must learn about: The ABC of dying. The going, yet not going, The loving and leaving, And the unbearable knowing and knowing
kindness feelings rodents
The rat had no morals, no conscience, no scruples, no consideration, no decency, no milk of rodent kindness, no compunctions, no higher feeling, no friendliness, no anything
funny inspiring mind
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.
mind trouble well-said
Too many things on my mind, said Wilbur. Well, said the goose, that's not my trouble. I have nothing at all on my mind, but I've too many things under my behind.
new-york islands years
The subtlest change in New York is something people don't speak much about but that is in everyone's mind. The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible. A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation of mortality is part of New York now: in the sound of jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest edition. (Written in 1949, 22 years before the World Trade Center was completed.)
writing thinking ideas
Templeton was down there now, rummaging around. When he returned to the barn, he carried in his mouth an advertisement he had torn from a crumpled magazine. How's this?" he asked, showing the ad to Charlotte. It says 'Crunchy.' 'Crunchy' would be a good word to write in your web." Just the wrong idea," replied Charlotte. "Couldn't be worse. We don't want Zuckerman to think Wilbur is crunchy. He might start thinking about crisp, crunchy bacon and tasty ham. That would put ideas into his head. We must advertise Wilbur's noble qualities, not his tastiness.
enthusiasm carefree reader
A single overstatement, wherever or however it occurs, diminishes the whole, and a carefree superlative has the power to destroy, for the reader, the object of the writer's enthusiasm.
memories air leaving
The young writer should learn to spot them: words that at first glance seem freighted with delicious meaning, but that soon burst in the air, leaving nothing but a memory of bright sound.
trying too-much sometimes
Sometimes a writer, like an acrobat, must try a trick that is too much for him.