“She was writing for everybody, for nobody, for our age, for her own...” — 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
If only she could put them together, she felt, write them out in some sentence, then she would have got at the… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
A writer should give direct certainty; explanations are so much water poured into the wine. — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
Life piles up so fast that I have no time to write out the equally fast rising mound of reflections. — 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
“Do you know I get such a passion for reading sometimes its like the other passion -writing- only the wrong side of… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
One ought to sink to the bottom of the sea, probably, and live alone with one's words. — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“What has praise and fame to do with poetry? Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice?” — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“Are they not criminals, books that have wasted our time and sympathy; are they not the most insidious enemies of society, corrupters,… — 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
It is from the middle class that writers spring, because, it is in the middle class only that the practice of writing… — 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
“I should like to write four lines at a time, describing the same feeling, as a musician does; because it always seems… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
[Final diary entry:] Occupation is essential. And now with some pleasure I find that it's seven; and must cook dinner. Haddock and… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“He would give every penny he has (such is the malignity of the germ) to write one little book and become famous;… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“Thus the British Empire came into existence; and thus - for there is no stopping damp; it gets into the inkpot as… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
Here I come to one of the memoir writer's difficulties -- one of the reasons why, though I read so many, so… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the… — 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
“Recall, then, some event that has left a distinct impression on you---how at the corner of the street, perhaps, you passed two… — 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
So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice? — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
The habit of writing for my eye is good practice. It loosens the ligaments. — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
The poet gives us his essence, but prose takes the mold of the body and mind. — 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 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