When we make a change, it's so easy to interpret our unsettledness as unhappiness, and our unhappiness as a result of having made the wrong decision. Our mental and emotional states fluctuate madly when we make big changes in our lives, and some days we could tight-rope across Manhattan, and other days we are too weary to clean our teeth. This is normal. This is natural. This is change.

He doubted her. You must never doubt the one you love. But they might not be telling the truth. Never mind that. You tell them the truth. What do you mean? You can't be another person's honesty, child, but you can be your own. So what should I say? When? When I love someone? You should say it.

Whoever it is you fall in love with for the first time, not just love but be in love with, is the one who will always make you angry, the one you can't be logical about.

Children, I suppose, are always unfinished business: they begin as part of your own body, and continue as separate as another continent.

Don't regret your life, child, it will pass soon enough.

Everything is imprinted for ever with what it once was.

Woolf wanted to say dangerous things in Orlando but she did not want to say them in the missionary position.