Of course, literature is the only spiritual and humane career. Even painting tends to dumness, and music turns people erotic, whereas the more you write the nicer you become.
Virginia WoolfI'm fundamentally, I think, an outsider. I do my best work and feel most braced with my back to the wall. It's an odd feeling though, writing aginst the current: difficult entirely to disregard the current. Yet of course I shall.
Virginia WoolfTo read a novel is a difficult and complex art. You must be capable not only of great fineness of perception, but of great boldness of imagination.
Virginia WoolfLiterature is no oneโs private ground, literature is common ground; let us trespass freely and fearlessly and find our own way for ourselves.
Virginia WoolfBrooding, she changed the pool into the sea, and made the minnows into sharks and whales, and cast vast clouds over this tiny world by holding her hand against the sun, and so brought darkness and desolation, like God himself, to millions of ignorant and innocent creatures, and then took her hand away suddenly and let the sun stream down.
Virginia Woolf