Few people ask from books what books can give us. Most commonly we come to books with blurred and divided minds, asking… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
The taste for books was an early one. As a child he was sometimes found at midnight by a page still reading.… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“She liked getting hold of some book... and keeping it to herself, and gnawing its contents in privacy, and pondering the meaning… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
...so now, Mrs. Ramsay thought, she could return to that dream land, that unreal but fascinating place, the Manning's drawing-room at Marlow… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
We agreed that people are now afraid of the English language. He [T.S. Eliot] said it came of being bookish, but not… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
Why does one write these books after all? The drudgery, the misery, the grind, are forgotten everytime; and one launches another, and… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
Nothing shakes my opinion of a book. Nothing -- nothing. Only perhaps if it's the book of a young person -- or… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
a novelist's chief desire is to be as unconscious as possible. He has to induce in himself a state of perpetual lethargy.… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
Thus Mr. Lawrence, Mr. Douglas and Mr. Joyce partly spoil their books for women readers by their display of self-conscious virility; and… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
Books are everywhere; and always the same sense of adventure fills us. Second-hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
As a creator of character his peculiarity is that he creates wherever his eyes rest ... With such a power at his… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
Does housekeeping interest you at all? I think it really ought to be just as good as writing and I never see… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
Have you any notion how many books are written about women in the course of one year? Have you any notion how… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
Middlemarch, the magnificent book which with all its imperfections is one of the few English novels for grown-up people. — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
Yet Byron never made tea as you do, who fill the pot so that when you put the lid on the tea… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
Walden - all his books, indeed - are packed with subtle, conflicting, and very fruitful discoveries. They are not written to prove… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
They lack suggestive power. And when a book lacks suggestive power, however hard it hits the surface of the mind it cannot… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“Sometimes it seems to me that I shall never write out all the books I have in my head, because of the… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
As for my next book, I won't write it till it has grown heavy in my mind like a ripe pear; pendant,… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
Of course, literature is the only spiritual and humane career. Even painting tends to dumness, and music turns people erotic, whereas the… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“The train slows and lengthens, as we approach London, the centre, and my heart draws out too, in fear, in exaltation. I am about… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“Across the broad continent of a woman's life falls the shadow of a sword. On one side all is correct, definite, orderly; the paths… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“Other worshipful objects were content with worship; men, women, God, all let one kneel prostrate; but this form, were it only the shape of… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
Why does Samuel Butler say, 'Wise men never say what they think of women'? Wise men never say anything else apparently. — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“Sometimes he woke with a brain like lead; at others it was as if a thousand wax tapers were alight and people were throwing… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
The extraordinary woman depends on the ordinary woman. It is only when we know what were the conditions of the average woman's life -… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
A veil of insanity everywhere: Oh why I was born in this age? It is a terrible age. — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
Love ought to stop on both sides, don’t you think, simultaneously?’ He spoke without any stress on the words, so as not to wake… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“It is so vast an alleviation to be able to point for another to look at. And then not to talk. To follow the… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“What a vast fertility of pleasure books hold for me! (...) I think I could happily live here & read forever.” — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
