Virginia Woolf Quotes
A biography is considered complete if it merely accounts for six or seven selves, whereas a person may well have as many as a thousand.
Romantic Love is only an Illusion. A story one makes up in One's Mind about Another Person.
Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can't use the wrong words.
if newspapers were written by people whose sole object in writing was to tell the truth about politics and the truth about art we should not believe in war, and we should believe in art.
The most extraordinary thing about writing is that when you've struck the right vein, tiredness goes. It must be an effort, thinking wrong.
King old ladies assure us that cats are often the best judges of character. A cat will always to to a good man, they say.
It seemed to her such nonsense-inventing differences, when people, heaven knows, were different enough without that.
If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure - the relationship so secret and private compared with relations with men. Why not write about it truthfully?
The connection between dress and war is not far to seek; your finest clothes are those you wear as soldiers.
But then anyone who's worth anything reads just what he likes, as the mood takes him, and with extravagant enthusiasm.
Now begins to rise in me the familiar rhythm; words that have lain dormant now lift, now toss their crests, and fall and rise, and falls again. I am a poet, yes. Surely I am a great poet.
Talents of the novelist: ... observation of character, analysis of emotion, people's feelings, personal relations.
There is no doubt in my mind, that I have found out how to begin (at 40) to say something in my own voice.
Besides, in this random miscellaneous company we may rub against some complete stranger who will, with luck, turn into the best friend we have in the world.
Green in nature is one thing, green in literature another. Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them together and they tear each other to pieces.
I am tied down with single words. But you wander off; you slip away; you rise up higher, with words and words in phrases.
She thought there were no Gods; no one was to blame; and so she evolved this atheist's religion of doing good for the sake of goodness.
There was a day when I liked writing letters -- it has gone. Unfortunately the passion for getting them remains.
To be nothing - is that not, after all, the most satisfactory fact in the whole world?
O why do I ever let anyone read what I write! Every time I have to go through a breakfast with a letter of criticism I swear I will write for my own praise or blame in future. It is a misery.
The word-coining genius, as if thought plunged into a sea of words and came up dripping.
As nobody can possibly tell me whether one's writing is bad or good, the only certain value is one's own pleasure. I am sure of that.
The chief glory of a woman is not to be talked of, said Pericles, himself a much-talked-of-man.
To enjoy freedom ... we have of course to control ourselves. We must not squander our powers, helplessly and ignorantly, squirting half the house in order to water a single rose.
Among the tortures and devestations of life is this then - our friends are not able to finish their stories.
madam," the man cried, leaping to the ground, "you're hurt!" "I'm dead, sir!" she replied. A few minutes later, they became engaged.
As an experience, madness is terrific ... and in its lava I still find most of the things I write about.
You cannot lecture on really pure poetry any more than you can talk about the ingredients of pure water-it is adulterated, methylated, sanded poetry that makes the best lectures.
The history of most women is hidden either by silence, or by flourishes and ornaments that amount to silence.
Sir, I would trust you with my heart. Moreover, we have left our bodies in the banqueting hall. Those on the turf are the shadows of our souls.
The world was going on as usual. All the time she was writing the world had continued.
