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
“and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929) with its famous dictum, "a woman must have money… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
She had read a wonderful play about a man who scratched on the wall of his cell and she had felt that… — 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
“What's the use trying to read Shakespeare, especially in one of those little paper editions whose pages get ruffled, or stuck together… — 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
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
To stand in a great bookshop crammed with books so new that their pages almost stick together, and the gilt on their… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
Who shall blame him? Who will not secretly rejoice when the hero puts his armour off, and halts by the window and… — 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
“We have our responsibilities as readers and even our importance. The standards we raise and the judgments we pass steal in the… — 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
Mr. Beerbohm in his way is perfect ... He has brought personality into literature, not unconsciously and impurely, but so consciously and… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“Books, she thought, grew of themselves. She never had time to read them. Alas! even the books that had been given her,… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“In your modesty you seem to consider that writers are of different blood and bone from yourselves; that they know more of… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“being an artist: "And this susceptibility of theirs is doubly unfortunate , I thought, returning again to my original enquiry into what… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“But what might be written in the book which had rounded its edges off in his pocket, she did not know. What… — 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
A learned man is a sedentary, concentrated solitary enthusiast, who searches through books to discover some particular grain of truth upon which… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
Let us begin by clearing up the old confusion between theman who loves learning and the man who loves reading, and point… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“She would not say of any one in the world that they were this or were that. She felt very young; at… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“He bethought him with pride that he had always been called a scholar, and sneered at for his love of solitude and… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts,… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose," she read, and so reading she was ascending, she felt, on to the top,… — 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
To read a novel is a difficult and complex art. You must be capable not only of great fineness of perception, but… — 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
To put it in a nutshell, he was afflicted with a love of literature. It was the fatal nature of this disease… — 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
“If I have to wait, I read; if I wake in the night, I feel along the shelf for a book. Swelling,… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“Literature is open to everybody. I refuse to allow you, Beadle though you are, to turn me off the grass. Lock up… — 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
“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