“Oh, yes, dear reader: the essay is alive. There is no reason to despair.” — 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
“... before parting that night we agreed that the objects of life were to produce good people and good books.” — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
... the transaction between a writer and the spirit of the age is one of infinite delicacy, and upon a nice arrangement… — 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
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
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
“Do not dictate to your author; try to become him. Be his fellow-worker and accomplice.” — 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 proper stuff of fiction' does not exist; everything is the proper stuff of fiction, every feeling, every thought; every quality of… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
Now the writer, I think, has the chance to live more than other people in the presence of ... reality. It is… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“For the reading of these books seems to perform a curious couching operation on the senses; one sees more intensely afterwards; the… — 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
“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
So I have to create the whole thing afresh for myself each time. Probably all writers now are in the same boat.… — 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
Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“For the philosopher is right who says that nothing is thicker than a knife's blade separates happiness from melancholy” — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
As I grow old I hate the writing of letters more and more, and like getting them better and better. — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
Literature is no one’s private ground, literature is common ground; let us trespass freely and fearlessly and find our own way for… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“At any rate, where books are concerned, it is notoriously difficult to fix labels of merit in such a way that they… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
I [who] am perpetually making notes in the margin of my mind for some final statement... — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
A thousand things to be written had I time: had I power. A very little writing uses up my capacity for writing. — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
I got out this diary and read, as one always reads one's own writing; with a kind of guilty intensity. — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“... 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
“Joy's life in the doing (..) I mean it's the writing, not the being read that excites me.” — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
As an experience, madness is terrific ... and in its lava I still find most of the things I write about. — 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
The only advice ... that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts,… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“Even things in a book-case change if they are alive; we find ourselves wanting to meet them again; we find them altered” — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
But then anyone who's worth anything reads just what he likes, as the mood takes him, and with extravagant enthusiasm. — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
Let it be fact, one feels, or let it be fiction; the imagination will not serve under two masters simultaneously. — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“Literature had taken possession even of her memories. She was matching him, presumably, with certain characters in the old novels...” — 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
“For the vision of a novelist is both complex and specialised; complex, because behind his characters and apart from them must stand… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
The thing about Proust is his combination of the utmost sensibility with the utmost tenacity. He searches out these butterfly shades to… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
I must try to set aside half an hour in some part of my day, and consecrate it to diary writing. Give… — 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
![“I [who] am perpetually making notes in the margin of my mind for some final statement...” quote by Virginia Woolf](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/6ff/virginia-woolf-49_finals_i-who-am-perpetually-making-notes-in-the_1211336.jpg)
