To 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.

Mrs Dalloway is always giving parties to cover the silence

The extraordinary woman depends on the ordinary woman. It is only when we know what were the conditions of the average woman's life - the number of children, whether she had money of her own, if she had a room to herself, whether she had help bringing up her family, if she had servants, whether part of the housework was her task - it is only when we can measure the way of life and experience made possible to the ordinary woman that we can account for the success or failure of the extraordinary woman as a writer.

For the young people could not talk. And why should they? Shout, embrace, swing, be up at dawn.

It is as if Emily Brontë could tear up all that we know human beings by, and fill these unrecognizable transparencies with such a gust of life that they transcend reality.

To make ideas effective, we must be able to fire them off. We must put them into action.

In illness words seem to possess a mystic quality.