[On writing:] The most egotistic of occupations, and the most gratifying while it lasts.
Vita Sackville-WestSerenity of spirit and turbulence of action should make up the sum of a man's life.
Vita Sackville-Westa letter, by its arrival, defrauds us of a whole secret region of our existence, the only region indeed in which the true pleasure of life may be tasted, the region of imagination, creative and protean, the clouds and beautiful shapes of whose heaven are destroyed by the wind of reality.
Vita Sackville-WestI suppose the pleasure of the country life lies really in the eternally renewed evidences of the determination to live. That is a truism when said, but anything but a truism when daily observed. Nothing shows up the difference between the thing said or read, so much as the daily experience of it.
Vita Sackville-West