E. B. White - quotes

"I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world
and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the
day."

Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the
frog dies of it.

Be obscure clearly.

It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good
writer.

One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.

Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get
the facts.

When I was a child people simply looked about them and were moderately
happy; today they peer beyond the seven seas, bury themselves waist deep in
tidings, and by and large what they see and hear makes them unutterably sad.

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

Writing is hard work and bad for the health.

Scott Adam's Tips on Writing

The Day You Became A Better Writer
I went from being a
bad writer to a good writer after taking a one-day course in “business writing.”
I couldn’t believe how simple it was. I’ll tell you the main tricks here so you
don’t have to waste a day in class.

Business writing is about clarity and persuasion. The main technique is
keeping things simple. Simple writing is persuasive. A good argument in five
sentences will sway more people than a brilliant argument in a hundred
sentences.

Don’t fight it.

Simple means getting rid of extra words. Don’t write, “He was very happy”
when you can write “He was happy.” You think the word “very” adds something. It
doesn’t. Prune your sentences.

Humor writing is a lot like business writing. It needs to be simple. The main
difference is in the choice of words. For humor, don’t say “drink” when you can
say “swill.” Your first sentence needs to grab the reader. Go back and read my
first sentence to this post. I rewrote it a dozen times. It makes you curious.
That’s the key.

Write short sentences.

Avoid putting multiple thoughts in one sentence. Readers aren’t as smart as
you’d think.

 

Learn how brains organize ideas. Readers comprehend “the boy hit the ball”
quicker than “the ball was hit by the boy.” Both sentences mean the same, but
it’s easier to imagine the object (the boy) before the action (the hitting). All
brains work that way. (Notice I didn’t say, “That is the way all brains
work”?)

That’s it. You just learned 80% of the rules of good writing. You’re
welcome.