E. B. White Children Quotations

Mother: It's broccoli, dear. --- Child: I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it.

Children almost always hang onto things tighter than their parents think they will.

A man's liberal and conservative phases seem to follow each other in a succession of waves from the time he is born. Children are radicals. Youths are conservatives, with a dash of criminal negligence. Men in their prime are liberals (as long as their digestion keeps pace with their intellect). The middle aged run to shelter: they insure their life, draft a will, accumulate mementos and occasional tables, and hope for security. And then comes old age, which repeats childhood - a time full of humors and sadness, but often full of courage and even prophecy.

Thurber did not write the way a surgeon operates, he wrote the way a child skips rope, the way a mouse waltzes.

Children hold spring so tightly in their brown fists-just as grownups, who are less sure of it, hold it in their hearts.

Children are game for anything. I throw them hard words, and they backhand them over the net. They love words that give them a hard time, provided they are in a context that absorbs their attention.

A schoolchild should be taught grammar - for the same reason that a medical student should study anatomy. Having learned about the exciting mysteries of an English sentence, the child can then go forth and speak and write any damn way he pleases.

I could see stealing bread and milk if your children were hungry, ... But these people are scum.

Wilbur never forgot Charlotte. Although he loved her children and grandchildren dearly, none of the new spiders ever quite took her place in his heart. She was in a class by herself. It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.

Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down. Children are demanding. They are the most attentive, curious, eager, observant, sensitive, quick, and generally congenial readers on earth.... Children are game for anything. I throw them hard words and they backhand them across the net.

You go to most rural areas of the tropics where malaria kills children and most are using drugs that are not effective.

There are buildings that some of your children are in that are older than Joe White. That's unacceptable, those buildings needs to be renovated.

You would think that after so many children have been shot running around the streets with real guns, that they wouldn't make things like this anymore,

I will admit that I'm the one who allowed this thing to happen on my watch, ... I've said it before, if helping children is a crime, I guess I'll do the time.