1,646 Quotes by Virginia Woolf

It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple; one must be woman-manly or man-womanly. It is fatal for a woman to lay the least stress on any grievance; to plead even with justice any cause; in any way to speak consciously as a woman. And fatal is no figure of speech; for anything written with that conscious bias is doomed to death. It ceases to be fertilized.

Why, he wondered, did people who had been asleep always want to make out that they were extremely wide-awake?

I think writing, my writing, is a species of mediumship. I become the person.

madam," the man cried, leaping to the ground, "you're hurt!" "I'm dead, sir!" she replied. A few minutes later, they became engaged.

How are we to account for the strange human craving for the pleasure of feeling afraid which is so much involved in our love of ghost stories?

Nothing, however, can be more arrogant, though nothing is commoner than to assume that of Gods there is only one, and of religions none but the speaker’s.

I really don't advise a woman who wants to have things her own way to get married

In solitude we give passionate attention to our lives, to our memories, to the details around us.

At any rate, when a subject is highly controversial-and any question about sex is that-one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold.