124 Quotes by Vita Sackville-West

She wondered which wounds went deeper: the jagged wounds of reality, or the profound invisible bruises of the imagination?

I am not a simpleton', he said, 'nor am I a childish old man. I dislike childishness and all such rubbish. I feel nothing but impatience with the people who pretend that the world is other than it is. The world, Lady Slane, is pitiably horrible. It is horrible because it is based upon competitive struggle - and really one does not know whether to call the basis of that struggle a convention or a necessity. Is it some extraordinary delusion, or is it a law of life?

I wouldn’t commit murder for the sake of an allegory.

Only it won’t be an earthquake - not in England, England isn’t seismic - it will be a gradual crumbling.

It is dreadful how I miss you, and everything that everybody says seems flat and stupid.

What is beautiful is good, and who is good will soon be beautiful.

The writer catches the changes of his mind on the hop. Growth is exciting; growth is dynamic and alarming. Growth of the soul, growth of the mind.

Travel is the most private of pleasures. There is no greater bore than the travel bore. We do not in the least want to hear what he has seen in Hong-Kong.

Among the many problems which beset the novelist, not the least weighty is the choice of the moment at which to begin his novel.