Behind the cotton wool is hidden a pattern; that weโI mean all human beingsโare connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art. Hamlet or a Beethoven quartet is the truth about this vast mass that we call the world. But there is no Shakespeare, there is no Beethoven; certainly and emphatically there is no God; we are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself.
Virginia WoolfYou have been in every way all that anyone could be.... If anybody could have saved me it would have been you.
Virginia WoolfThe Lighthouse was then a silvery, misty-looking tower with a yellow eye, that opened suddenly, and softly in the evening. Nowโ James looked at the Lighthouse. He could see the white-washed rocks; the tower, stark and straight; he could see that it was barred with black and white; he could see windows in it; he could even see washing spread on the rocks to dry. So that was the Lighthouse, was it? No, the other was also the Lighthouse. For nothing was simply one thing. The other Lighthouse was true too.
Virginia WoolfWell, Iโve had my fun; Iโve had it, he thought, looking up at the swinging baskets of pale geraniums. And it was smashed to atomsโhis fun, for it was half made up, as he knew very well; invented, this escapade with the girl; made up, as one makes up the better part of life, he thoughtโmaking onself up; making her up; creating an exquisite amusement, and something more. But odd it was, and quite true; all this one could never shareโit smashed to atoms.
Virginia WoolfThe sigh of all the seas breaking in measure round the isles soothed them; the night wrapped them; nothing broke their sleep, until, the birds beginning and the dawn weaving their thin voices in to its whiteness
Virginia WoolfLet us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon the consciousness. Let us not take it for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small.
Virginia Woolf