“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”
Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own
Source: A Room of One's Own (1929), Ch. 1, p. 4
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@xy, member from Sept. 25, 2023“Growing up is losing some illusions, in order to acquire others.”
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer
“The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.”
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer
“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”
Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own
Source: A Room of One's Own (1929), Ch. 1, p. 18
Context: The human frame being what it is, heart, body and brain all mixed together, and not contained in separate compartments as they will be no doubt in another million years, a good dinner is of great importance to good talk. One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.
“And you wish to be a poet; and you wish to be a lover.”
Virginia Woolf book The Waves
Source: The Waves
“Life stand still here, Mrs. Ramsay said.”
Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway
Part III, Ch. 3
To the Lighthouse (1927)
Source: Mrs. Dalloway
Context: "Like a work of art," she repeated, looking from her canvas to the drawing-room steps and back again. She must rest for a moment. And, resting, looking from one to the other vaguely, the old question which transversed the sky of the soul perpetually, the vast, the general question which was apt to particularise itself at such moments as these, when she released faculties that had been on the strain, stood over her, paused over her, darkened over her. What is the meaning of life? That was all — a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one. This, that, and the other; herself and Charles Tansley and the breaking wave; Mrs. Ramsay bringing them together; Mrs. Ramsay saying, "Life stand still here"; Mrs. Ramsay making of the moment something permanent (as in another sphere Lily herself tried to make of the moment something permanent) — this was of the nature of a revelation. In the midst of chaos there was shape; this eternal passing and flowing (she looked at the cloud going and the leaves shaking) was struck into stability. Life stand still here, Mrs. Ramsay said. "Mrs. Ramsay! Mrs. Ramsay!" she repeated. She owed it all to her.
“How many times have people used a pen or paintbrush because they couldn’t pull the trigger?”
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer
“It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.”
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer
Variant: It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality
Source: The Death of the Moth and Other Essays
“The extraordinary woman depends on the ordinary woman.”
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer
"Women and Fiction"
Granite and Rainbow (1958)
Context: The extraordinary woman depends on the ordinary woman. It is only when we know what were the conditions of the average woman's life … it is only when we can measure the way of life and the experience of life made possible to the ordinary woman that we can account for the success or failure of the extraordinary woman as a writer.