"In every queen there's a touch of floozy."

"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."

"The time not to become a father is eighteen years before a war."

"Safety is all well and good: I prefer freedom."

"If I can fool a bug... I can surely fool a man. People are not as smart as bugs."

"To achieve style, begin by affecting none."

"I don't understand it, and I don't like what I don't understand."

"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."

"A mistake is simply another way of doing things."

"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."

"If you don't know how to pronounce a word, say it loud!" (William Strunk) ... Why compound ignorance with inaudibility?"

"I don’t know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens."

"It is deeply satisfying to win a prize in front of a lot of people."

"You have been my friend," replied Charlotte, "That in itself is a tremendous thing."

"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."

"We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or doing laundry."

"I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it."

"The best writing is rewriting."

"But real life is only one kind of life—there is also the life of the imagination."

"The city is like poetry; it compresses all life, all races and breeds, into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines."

"English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education - sometimes it's sheer luck, like getting across the street."

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

"Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time."

"Sometimes a writer, like an acrobat, must try a trick that is too much for him."

"Meetings bore me."

"Have you ever found anything that gives you relief?"... "Yes. A drink"

"When an American family becomes separated from its toothbrushes and combs and pajamas for a few hours it considers that it has had quite an adventure."

"Life is always a rich and steady time when you are waiting for something to happen or to hatch."

"An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do but who has escaped the terrible desire to write."

"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."

"Once in everyone's life there is apt to be a period when he is fully awake, instead of half-asleep."

"Everything in life is somewhere else and you get there in a car."

"New york provides not only a continuing excitation but also a spectacle that is continuing."

"I would really rather feel bad in Maine than feel good anywhere else"

"On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy.... No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky."

"Most people believe almost anything they see in print."

"Good things come to those who find it and shove it in their mouth!"

"I am always humbled by the infite ingenuity of the Lord, who can make a red barn cast a blue shadow."

"It is by all odds the loftiest of cities. It even managed to reach the highest point in the sky at the lowest moment of the depression."

"The night seemed long. Wilbur's stomach was empty and his mind was full. And when your stomach is empty and your mind is full, it's always hard to sleep."

"Remember that writing is translation, and the opus to be translated is yourself."

"A poet dares be just so clear and no clearer... He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring."

"A despot doesn't fear eloquent writers preaching freedom-he fears a drunken poet may crack a joke that will take hold."

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

"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"

"It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill him, depending a good deal on luck. No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky."

"Thus I, gone forth, as spiders do, In spider’s web a truth discerning, Attach one silken strand to you For my returning."

"Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people-- people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book."

"To perceive Christmas through its wrapping becomes more difficult with every year. "The Distant Music of the Hounds," 1954"

"By comparison with other less hectic days, the city is uncomfortable and inconvenient; but New Yorkers temperamentally do not crave comfort and convenience- if they did they would live elsewhere."