“Many great writers have been extraordinarily awkward in daily exchange, but the greatest give the impression that their style was nursed by the closest attention to colloquial speech.”

Hello Out There (1941)

Paris Review interview (1958)

From a review of the revised edition of “The Elements of Style” by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White published in Esquire, November 1959.

The Principles of Success in Literature (1865)
Context: Except in the rare cases of great dynamic thinkers whose thoughts are as turning-points in the history of our race, it is by Style that writers gain distinction, by Style they secure their immortality. In a lower sphere many are remarked as writers although they may lay no claim to distinction as thinkers, if they have the faculty of felicitously expressing the ideas of others; and many who are really remarkable as thinkers gain but slight recognition from the public, simply because in them the faculty of expression is feeble. In proportion as the work passes from the sphere of passionless intelligence to that of impassioned intelligence, from the region of demonstration to the region of emotion, the art of Style becomes more complex, its necessity more imperious.

Malachi, in Act 3
The Matchmaker (1954)

Uncle Dynamite (1948)

The Paris Review interview