Moreover, a book is not made of sentences laid end to end, but of sentences built, if an image helps, into arcades… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“anyone who’s worth anything reads just what he likes, as the mood takes him, and with extravagant enthusiasm.” — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
Surely it was time someone invented a new plot, or that the author came out from the bushes. — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“the whole of Victorian literature done up in grey paper & neatly tied with string” — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“... before parting that night we agreed that the objects of life were to produce good people and good books.” — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others. — 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
“It is so vast an alleviation to be able to point for another to look at. And then not to talk. To… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
Books should stand on their own feet ... If they need shoring up by a preface here, an introduction there, they have… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“What a vast fertility of pleasure books hold for me! I went in and found the table laden with books. I looked… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with… — 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
There is no room for the impurities of literature in an essay… the essay must be pure--pure like water or pure like… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“One must own that there are certain books which can be read without the mind and without the heart, but still with… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“In all the books love is one of the great facts that mould human life. But it is a catastrophe: it happens… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
If behind the erratic gunfire of the press the author felt that there was another kind of criticism, the opinion of people… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“Second-hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
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
“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
“Therefore I would ask you to write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however trivial or however vast. By hook… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“A fine gentleman like that, they said, had no need of books. Let him leave books, they said, to the palsied or… — 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
“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
“We are all women you assure me? Then I may tell you that the very next words I read were these –… — 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
“Consider how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down,… — 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
“Therefore I would ask you to write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however trivial or however vast. By hook… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“Finally, to hinder the description of illness in literature, there is the poverty of the language. English, which can express the thoughts… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“You have been reading Byron. You have been marking the passages that seem to approve of your own character. I find marks… — 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
“And if literature is not the Bride and Bedfellow of Truth, what is she? 'Confound it all.' he cried, 'why say Bedfellow… — 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
“They were boastful, triumphant; it seemed to both that they had read every book in the world; known every sin, passion, and… — 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
“Think of me, the uneducated child reading books in my room at 22 Hyde Park Gate -- now advanced to this glory...… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“Suppose, for instance, that men were only represented in literature as the lovers of women, and were never the friends of men,… — 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
Every face, every shop, bedroom window, public-house, and dark square is a picture feverishly turned--in search of what? It is the same… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“I know what loves are trembling into fire; how jealousy shoots its green flashes hither and thither; how intricately love crosses love;… — 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
“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
“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
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
“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
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
A veil of insanity everywhere: Oh why I was born in this age? It is a terrible age. — Virginia Woolf Copy Share
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
“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
“What a vast fertility of pleasure books hold for me! (...) I think I could happily live here & read forever.” — Virginia Woolf Copy Share
“For one's children so often gave one's own perceptions a little thrust forwards.” — Virginia Woolf Copy Share
“She would not say of anyone in the world now that they were this or were that. She felt very young; at the same… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share
