"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 (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."
The rest of the interview is pretty great too, including:
"It has never struck me as harmful to make a conscious effort to elevate one's thoughts, in the hope that by doing so one's writing will get off the ground, even if only for a few seconds (like Orville Wright) and to a low altitude. I am an egoist, inclined to inject myself into almost everything I write. This usually calls for good taste, if one is to stay alive. I'm not against good taste in writing, however unpopular it may be today.
"I was a flop as a daily reporter. Every piece had to be a masterpiece--and before you knew it, Tuesday was Wednesday.
"My deadline now is death. Thurber once said it's remarkable how many people are up and around."
"How should one adjust to age?" Mr. White asked, and replied: "In principle, one shouldn't adjust. In fact, one does. (Or I do.) When my head starts knocking because of my attempt to write, I quit writing instead of carrying on as I used to do when I was young.
"These are adjustments. But I gaze into the faces of our senior citizens in our Southern cities, and they wear a sad look that disturbs me. I am sorry for all those who have agreed to grow old. I haven't agreed yet. Old age is a special problem for me because I've never been able to shed the mental image I have of myself--a lad of about 19…
Universities have become very big, and with the bigness comes remoteness, inaccessibility. This is bad, and it causes trouble. When I was an undergraduate, there were a few professors who went out of their way to befriend students. At the house of one of these men I felt more at home than I did in my own home with my own mother and father. I felt excited, instructed, accepted, influential, and in a healthy condition.
Apparently, most students today don't enjoy any such experience, and they are ready to dismantle the Establishment before they have either defined it or tasted it. In a democracy, dissent is as essential as the air we breathes. It's only when students form an elite society, immune from ordinary restraints, that I worry about dissent…
I seldom peddle advice to the young. Most of them seem better informed than I am, and they have their own special problems.
I'll say this, though: Every country is entitled to a few mistakes. The Vietnam war is a mistake. The Selective Service is inequitable. Yet even a country that is in the midst of a mistake must have an armed force loyal to its basic beliefs and prepared to defend its general principles. If that were to go, all would go…
I was never a reader. I was arriving at conclusions almost independently of the entire history of the world. If I sat down to read everything that had been written--I'm a slow reader--I would never have written anything. My joy and my impulse was to get something down on paper myself….
I would rather watch a really gifted plumber than listen to a bad poet. I'd rather watch someone build a good boat than attend the launching of a poorly constructed play. My admirations are wide-ranging and are not confined to arts and letters."
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