E. B. White Quotes

Commas in The New Yorker fall with the precision of knives in a circus act, outlining the victim.

When you are a sentence-based writer, they have to be good. They have to be really on the spot. Because when you don't have a plot, really, what shall you rely on? Just language. And sometimes I am so afraid of writing the wrong thing, I just sit and wait for the right thing to come.

To find a new word that is accurate and different, you have to be alert for it.

I welcome new words, or old words used in new ways, provided the result is more precision, added color or greater expressiveness.

Why use a modifier to set straight a not-quite-right noun when the right noun is available?

It may be observed, that very polished languages, and such as are praised for their superior clearness and perspicuity, are generally deficient in strength.

All the elements of good writing depend on the writer's skill in choosing one word instead of another.

[Bill Shawn] had always been in The New Yorker immaculately dressed - quietly, immaculately dressed, very soft-spoken. On the phone I could hardly hear him sometimes.

For example, there's no word emocionó in English, so I have to say, "You, you really emotioned me," It's more precise, even though it sounds odd. "My father emotioned me." Or "That performance really emotioned to me."

The fight against bad English is not frivolous.

Well,” said Stuart, “a misspelled word is an abomination in the sight of everyone.

The more words you have at your disposal, the more precisely you can express yourself.

Writing and reading and speaking with specificity and skill has never seen more important to me than it does at this moment. It's what's between us and chaos.

When you're selling a product or service, you don't have - it doesn't have to be absolutely perfect, although I've provided language that is. When you're a politician, one wrong word changes the entire - changes the meaning of something.

I don't like this official/unofficial distinction. It sound, er, officious.

So in writing, there is always a right word, and every other than that is wrong. There is no beauty in words except in their collocation. The effect of a fanciful word misplaced, is like that of a horn of exquisite polish growing on a human head.

I love revising things, because you see how you can get the language to get closer to intention. You know there are three ways to say X thing, but one will say it better than the other two. And in saying it better, it gets you closer to something.

There's a marvelous sense of mastery that comes with writing a sentence that sounds exactly as you want it to.

The use of the right word, the exact word, is the difference between a pencil with a sharp point and a thick crayon.

Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation's tears in shoulder blades.

When I finish a sentence, after much labor, it's finished. A certain point comes at which you can't do any more work on it because you know it will kill the sentence.

No sound is dissonant which tells of life.

I know that women are smarter than men. I don't wanna sound like I'm on a bandwagon for chicks but I do love 'em, can't front. Women are smarter than men. I know I gotta lot of chicks up my sleeve but you guys are twice as good.

I think damage to the eye or damage to the teeth is one of the most universally cringing things you can do in a movie and these are very fragile sounds.

At the ancient pond the frog plunges into the sound of water