E. B. White

The terror of the atom age is not the violence of the new power but the speed of man's adjustment to it, the speed of his acceptance.

There's no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another.

I can only assume that your editorial writer tripped over the First Amendment and thought it was the office cat.

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

Writing is hard work and bad for the health.

The trouble with the profit system has always been that it was highly unprofitable to most people.

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

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.

Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.

Old age is a special problem for me because I've never been able to shed the mental image I have of myself - a lad of about 19.

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.

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

The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.

I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that does not have a slant. All writing slants the way a writer leans, and no man is born perpendicular.

Creation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions.

Books hold most of the secrets of the world, most of the thoughts that men and women have had. And when you are reading a book, you and the author are alone together-just the two of you.

No matter what changes take place in the world, or in me, nothing ever seems to disturb the face of spring.

As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left us in a bad time.

A man who publishes his letters becomes a nudist - nothing shields him from the world's gaze except his bare skin. A writer, writing away, can always fix things up to make himself more presentable, but a man who has written a letter is stuck with it for all time.

Commuter - one who spends his life In riding to and from his wife; A man who shaves and takes a train And then rides back to shave again.

An unhatched egg is to me the greatest challenge in life.