Author E.B. White would turn 119 today. To honor the prolific, versatile and adroit writer — Charlotte’s Web, Here is New York, The Elements of Style and countless New Yorker essays are among his many varied works — here are 15 excellent E.B. White quotes on writing.

1. “Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.”
2. “Writing is hard work and bad for the health.”
3. “Delay is natural to a writer. He is like a surfer—he bides his time, waits for the perfect wave on which to ride in. Delay is instinctive with him. He waits for the surge (of emotion? of strength? of courage?) that will carry him along.”
4. “I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that doesn’t have a slant. All writing slants the way a writer leans, and no man is born perpendicular, although many men are born upright.”
5. “Only a person who is congenially self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays.”
6. “There is nothing harder to estimate than a writer’s time, nothing harder to keep track of. There are moments—moments of sustained creation—when his time is fairly valuable; and there are hours and hours when a writer’s time isn’t worth the paper he is not writing anything on.”
7. “Writers do not merely reflect and interpret life, they inform and shape life.”
8. “A writer should concern himself with whatever absorbs his fancy, stirs his heart, and unlimbers his typewriter. … A writer has the duty to be good, not lousy: true, not false; lively, not dull; accurate, not full of error. He should tend to lift people up, not lower them down.”
9. “The best writing is re-writing.”
10. “Advice to young writers who want to get ahead without any annoying delays: don’t write about man; write about a man.”
11. “Advice from this elderly practitioner is to forget publishers and just roll a sheet of copy paper into your machine and get lost in your subject.”
12. “The mind travels faster than the pen; consequently, writing becomes a question of learning to make occasional wing shots, bringing down the bird of thought as it flashes by. A writer is a gunner, sometimes waiting in the blind for something to come in, sometimes roaming the countryside hoping to scare something up.”
13. “A writer is like a bean plant – he has his little day, and then gets stringy.”
14. “Although there is no substitute for merit in writing, clarity comes closest to being one.”
15. “Use the smallest word that does the job.

Fin.