Needless To Say

I came across this E.B. White quote in a magazine, and decided it was too wonderful to keep to myself. White wrote it in response to a reader:

Dear Mr. ______

It comes down to the meaning of “needless.” Often a word can be removed without destroying the structure of a sentence, but that does not necessarily mean that the word is needless or that the sentence has gained by its removal.

If you were to put a narrow construction on the word “needless,” you would have to remove tens of thousands of words from Shakespeare, who seldom said anything in six words that could be said in twenty. Writing is not an exercise in excision. It’s a journey into sound. How about “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow”? One tomorrow would suffice, but it’s the other two that have made the thing immortal.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for your letter.