“Orlando was unaccountably disappointed. She had thought of literature all these years (her seclusion, her rank, her sex must be her excuse)… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“…the art of writing has for backbone some fierce attachment to an idea…. It is on the back of an idea, something… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“Virginia Woolf (January 25, 1882 – March 28, 1941) was an English novelist and essayist regarded as one of the foremost modernist… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“People should not leave looking-glasses hanging in their rooms any more then they should leave open cheque books or letters confessing some… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
Green in nature is one thing, green in literature another. Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them together… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers, uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all the… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“And he went on reading. His lips twitched. It filled him. It fortified him. He clean forgot all the little rubs and… — 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
“As for the other experiences, the solitary ones, which people go through alone, in their bedrooms, in their offices, walking the fields… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“To admit authorities, however heavily furred and gowned, into our libraries and let them tell us how to read, what to read,… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“One could not but play for a moment with the thought of what might have happened if Charlotte Brontë had possessed say… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“She stood by the fireplace talking, in that beautiful voice which made everything she said sound like a caress, to Papa, who… — 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
“Would that we might spare the reader what is to come and say to him in so many words, Orlando died and… — 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
to write a novel in the heart of London is next to an impossibility. I feel as if I were nailing a… — 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
“And somehow or other, the windows being open, and the book held so that it rested upon a background of escallonia hedges… — 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
I got out this diary, & read as one always does read one's own writing, with a kind of guilty intensity. — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“There was something unusual about him, or something behind him. It might be that he was bookish - never came to see… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“It is a still stranger thing that there is nothing so delightful in the world as telling stories. It is far pleasanter… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“I had come at last, in the course of this rambling, to the shelves which hold books by the living; by women… — 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
