E.B. White Quote of the Week From Greg Bover

From the deck of the sloop Linnet in Biddeford Pool ME.

“If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”
E.B. White (1899-1985)

A graduate of Cornell University, White joined the staff of the New Yorker magazine in 1927 and spent the rest of his working life there writing almost innumerable essays, short features and the humorous “Block that metaphor!” fillers for what is often described, in literary circles at least, as the best magazine in the world. White also wrote children’s books in the forties and fifties, including Stuart Little, The Trumpet of the Swan, and the much beloved Charlotte’s Web, some of the best reading aloud material ever published. White’s 1959 update of William Strunk’s Elements of Style continues to be must reading for anyone who hopes to write clearly. E. B. White was step-father to the baseball writer Roger Angell and the father of famed wooden boat designer Joel White. E.B. won the Pulitzer Prize, the Wilder Medal, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Greg Bover