1,646 Quotes by Virginia Woolf

It is only by putting it into words that I make it whole …It is the rapture I get when in writing I seem to be discovering what belongs to what; making a scene come right; making a character come together. From this I reach what I might call a philosophy; … that behind the cotton wool is hidden a pattern; that we – I mean all human beings – are connected with this … I feel that when I am writing I am doing what is far more necessary than anything else.

Life was that — humiliation, renunciation.

So I have to create the whole thing afresh for myself each time. Probably all writers now are in the same boat. It is the penalty we pay for breaking with tradition, and the solitude makes the writing more exciting though the being read less so. One ought to sink to the bottom of the sea, probably, and live alone with ones words.

The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre of our being, threads the heart, pierces the liver.

These scenes, by the way, are not altogether a literary device - a means of summing up and making a knot of innumerable little threads. Innumerable threads were there; still, if I stopped to disentangle, I could collect a number. But whatever the reason may be, I find that scene making is my natural way of marking the past.

I have felt that odd whirr of wings in the head.

Oare de ce trăim? De ce ne dăm atîta silință ca rasa umană să meargă înainte? E un lucru atît de dezirabil? Sîntem atît de atrăgători ca specie?

Los omóplatos de Rhoda casi se tocan, en el centro de la espalda, como las alas de una mariposa. Mientras contempla los números de tiza, su pensamiento se aloja en esos blancos círculos. Pasa a través de las alzadas blancas y penetra en el vacío sola. No tienen sentido para ella. Ni ella tiene respuesta para ellos. Rhoda no tiene cuerpo y los otros sí.

These moments of escape are not to be despised. They come too seldom.