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
The poet gives us his essence, but prose takes the mould of the body and mind entire. — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry. — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
The most extraordinary thing about writing is that when you've struck the right vein, tiredness goes. It must be an effort, thinking… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
What a labour writing is ... making one sentence do the work of a page; that's what I call hard work. — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
O why do I ever let anyone read what I write! Every time I have to go through a breakfast with a… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“The indifference of the world which Keats and Flaubert and other men of genius have found so hard to bear was in… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“For once the disease of reading has laid upon the system it weakens it so that it falls an easy prey to… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“She would not have cared to confess how infinitely she preferred the exactitude, the star-like impersonality, of figures to the confusion, agitation,… — 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
“It's too short,' she said, 'ever so much too short.' Never did anybody look so sad. Bitter and black, half-way down, in… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
I'm fundamentally, I think, an outsider. I do my best work and feel most braced with my back to the wall. It's… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
All great writers have, of course, an atmosphere in which they seem most at their ease and at their best; a mood… — 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
a novelist's chief desire is to be as unconscious as possible. He has to induce in himself a state of perpetual lethargy.… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
Here was a woman about the year 1800 writing without hate, without bitterness, without fear, without protest, without preaching. That was how… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
Anyone who has the temerity to write about Jane Austen is aware of [two] facts: first, that of all great writers she… — 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
Words, English words, are full of echoes, of memories, of associations. They have been out and about, on people's lips, in their… — 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
“... All who have brought about a state of sex-consciousness are to blame, and it is they who drive me, when I… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
People only become writers if they can't find the one book they've always wanted to read. — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“the time coming when I can endure to read my own writing in print without blushing—shivering and wishing to take cover?” — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“I am I: and I must follow that furrow, not copy another. That is the only justification for my writing, living.” — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
And now more than anything I want beautiful prose. I relish it more and more exquisitely. — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
The world was going on as usual. All the time she was writing the world had continued. — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
As nobody can possibly tell me whether one's writing is bad or good, the only certain value is one's own pleasure. I… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
This is not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant. — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
When I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke round me I am in darkness—I am nothing. — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
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
Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works. — 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
I am overwhelmed with things I ought to have written about and never found the proper words. — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
You have a touch in letter writing that is beyond me. Something unexpected, like coming round a corner in a rose garden… — 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? So… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
women have always been poor, not for two hundred years merely, but from the beginning of time. ... Women, then, have not… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“These scenes, by the way, are not altogether a literary device - a means of summing up and making a knot of… — 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
![“Anyone who has the temerity to write about Jane Austen is aware of [two] facts: first, that of all great writers she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness; second, that there are twenty-five elderly gentlemen living in the neighbourhood of London who resent any slight upon her…” quote by Virginia Woolf](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/cde/virginia-woolf-49_aunt_anyone-who-has-the-temerity-to-write-abo_526627.jpg)
![“... All who have brought about a state of sex-consciousness are to blame, and it is they who drive me, when I want to stretch my faculties on a book, to seek it in that happy age ... when the writer used both sides of his mind [the male and female sides of his mind] equally. One must turn back to…” quote by Virginia Woolf](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/107/virginia-woolf-49_androgyny_all-who-have-brought-about-a-state-of-se_2271608.jpg)
