I recently bought a used copy of E. B. White's essays. His writings have enchanted me since I was a child. I believe he is indeed a consummate master of style; there is an economic grace to his writing that I imbibed early on in my career as a reader, and which I try, both consciously and unconsciously, to emulate in my own productions. These excepts are from the essay titled "Some Remarks on Humor."

"Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind."

I believe the same applies to literature, and probably any other art, and this is precisely why I've chosen to place my efforts into literary creation, rather than literary criticism, despite having been rigorously trained in the production of the latter.

Another tasty quote:

"Practically everyone is a manic depressive of sorts, with his up moments and his down moments, and you certainly don't need to be a humorist to taste the sadness of the situation and mood. But there is often a rather fine line between laughing and crying, and if a humorous piece of writing brings a person to the point where his emotional responses are untrustworthy and seem likely to break over into the opposite realm, it is because humor, like poetry, has an extra content to it. It plays close to the big hot fire which is Truth, and sometimes the reader feels the heat."