E. B. White Quotes

The fools think I am writing algebra but what I am really writing is geometry.

If you can't hide what you are going to do, do it so everybody thinks you are a fool.

Scientists are the easiest to fool. ... They think in straight, predictable, directable, and therefore misdirectable, lines. The only world they know is the one where everything has a logical explanation and things are what they appear to be. Children and conjurors-they terrify me. Scientists are no problem; against them I feel quite confident.

Whatever claim you use to gain attention, the advertisement should tell a story reasonably complete.

I didn't lie, I was writing fiction with my mouth.

You are so terribly nimble, so clever. I distrust your cleverness. You make a wonderful pattern, everything is in its place, it looks convincingly clear, too clear. And meanwhile, where are you? Not on the clear surface of your ideas, but you have already sunk deeper, into darker regions, so that one only thinks one has been given all your thoughts, one only imagines you have emptied yourself in that clarity. But there are layers and layers - you're bottomless, unfathomable. Your clearness is deceptive. You are the thinker who arouses most confusion in me, most doubt, most disturbance.

You think you know how this story is going to end, but you don't.

What you think is the point is not the point at all but only the beginning of the sharpness.

I've been writing as long as I've been able to form words. I never wrote with an idea of publishing anything until I began working on '[To Kill a] Mockingbird'. I think that what went before may have been a rather subconscious form of learning how to write, of training myself.

It is dishonorable to say one thing and think another; how much more dishonorable to write one thing and think another.

She looked at me. "What? Is there something wrong with my idea?" "It's not very heroic," I said dismissively. "I was expecting something with a little more flair." "Well, I left my armor and warhorse at home," she said. "You're just upset because your big University brain couldn't think of a way, and my plan is brilliant.

Phony psychics like Uri Geller have had particular success in bamboozling scientists with ordinary stage magic, because only scientists are arrogant enough to think that they always observe with rigorous and objective scrutiny, and therefore could never be so fooled while ordinary mortals know perfectly well that good performers can always find a way to trick people.

I think it is harder to write a story that appeals to the intellect. But, when you tie onto one, you can do it quite deeply. It really depends on the type of idea you have to begin with.

The technological age we're in now is the perfect forum for constant misdirection and constant distraction. I ultimately think it's a war to keep people from realizing the true nature of themselves and the true nature of life. All the things people are in pursuit of now, in 2014, are total illusions. It just destroys people's happiness.

Writing is a conversation with reading; a dialogue with thinking. All conversations with older people contain repetition. Some of the ideas mean a lot to me, just interesting, so I both embrace and attack the ideas because I found them, well, delightful.

The idea that I [should] trust my eyes more than the stats, I don't buy that because I've seen magicians pull rabbits out of hats and I know that the rabbit's not in there.

Amy Pond: 'I thought... well, I started to think you were just a madman with a box.' The Doctor: 'Amy Pond, there's something you better understand about me, 'cause it's important and one day your life may depend on it. [He Smiles] I am definitely a madman with a box.

It varies, I don't think there is any one set way of writing songs or coming up with ideas, it comes in so many ways you know.

I feel like a lot of people involved with celebrity journalism have interesting ideas about the people they want to write about going into the interview. Then as soon as they actually sit down with that person, they basically ask the questions they think journalists are supposed to ask, and they start viewing themselves almost as a peer of the subject. Like they're going to become friends. That's why most celebrity journalism is so terrible.

One of the reasons I don't like to use the word "tricks" , I do think of them as theatrical pieces, and as pretentious as that might sound, there's a real reason for it. It's not the idea of tricking you; it's the idea of taking you along on this particular journey the way you would in any other theatrical situation. But, hopefully, you're going to be fooled at the end.

My main interests right now are to publish, to write, to explicate various views which I hope have an impact on thinking people.

What the devil to do with the sentence "Who the devil does he think he's fooling?" You can't write "Whom the devil- ".

I don't try to be clever at all. The idea that I could see what no one else can is an illusion.

The very idea that you can pursue happiness, that you can deserve it, that you can demand it, that you have the right to be happy, is foolish. Nobody has the right to be happy. You can be happy, but there is nothing like a right about it. And if you think that it is your right you will go on missing, because you have started to look in the wrong direction from the very beginning.

All this [Paul's writing] is nothing better than the jargon of a conjurer who picks up phrases he does not understand to confound the credulous people who come to have their fortune told. Age of Reason