I want to write a novel about Silence," he said; “the things people don’t say. — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
Writing is a divine art, and the more I write and read the more I love it. — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
The art of writing has for backbone some fierce attachment to an idea. — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“Oh, yes, dear reader: the essay is alive. There is no reason to despair.” — 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
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
“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
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
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
“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
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
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
I am reading six books at once, the only way of reading; since, as you will agree, one book is only a… — 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 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
“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
“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
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
“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
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
“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
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
“The one she needed most kept aloof, for she was, to hear her talk, changing her selves as quickly as she drove… — 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
“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
Like most uneducated Englishwomen, I like reading--I like reading books in the bulk. — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
I feel that by writing I am doing what is far more necessary than anything else. — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
Often on a wet day I begin counting up; what I've read; what I haven't read. — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“Fiction here is likely to contain more truth than fact. Therefore” — 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
