In my later years I have sought to become simpler, straighter and purer in my handling of the language. I've had many writing hero...es, writers who have influenced me. Of the ones still alive, I can think of E.B. White. I certainly admire the pure, crystal stream of his prose. When I was very young as a sportswriter I knowingly and unashamedly imitated others. I had a series of heroes who would delight me for a while and I'd imitate them--Damon Runyon, Westbrook Pegler, Joe Williams.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Not out of those, on whom systems of education have exhausted their culture, comes the helpful giant to destroy the old or to buil...d the new, but out of unhandselled savage nature, out of terrible Druids and Berserkirs, come at last Alfred and Shakespeare.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
find out who it is that writes those lovely cracker mottoes!' ... 'Tell me, Henry Wadsworth, Alfred, Poet Close, or Mister Tupper, Do you write the bonbon mottoes my Elvira pulls at supper?'LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If the British prose style is Churchillian, America is the tobacco auctioneer, the barker; Runyon, Lardner, W.W., the traveling sa...lesman who can sell the world the Brooklyn Bridge every day, can put anything over on you and convince you that tomatoes grow at the South Pole.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Enhances the chances to bless with a benison Alfred Lord Tennyson crossing the barlaid... With cold vegetation from pale deputations Of temperance workers (all signed In Memoriam)LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »