Needless to say, the business of living interferes with the solitude so needed for any work of the imagination. Here's what Virginia Woolf said in her diary about the sticky issue: "I've shirked two parties, and another Frenchman, and buying a hat, and tea with Hilda Trevelyan, for I really can't combine all this with keeping all my imaginary people going.
Virginia WoolfOne has to secrete a jelly in which to slip quotations down people's throats - and one always secretes too much jelly.
Virginia WoolfOne likes people much better when they're battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph.
Virginia WoolfThere is something about the present which we would not exchange, though we were offered a choice of all past ages to live in.
Virginia WoolfBut he could not taste, he could not feel. In the teashop among the tables and the chattering waiters the appalling fear came over him- he could not feel. He could reason; he could read, Dante for example, quite easilyโฆhe could add up his bill; his brain was perfect; it must be the fault of the world then- that he could not feel.
Virginia WoolfIt is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything.
Virginia Woolf