Virginia Woolf

Author of TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, THE WAVES, MRS DALLOWAY, etc. Novelist, essayist, smoker.

[Virginia Woolf @TallandHouse]

The rack and the thumbscrew are applied. Human nature is remorseless.

[Virginia Woolf @TallandHouse]

Once you fall, human nature is on you. Holmes and Bradshaw are on you. They scour the desert. They fly screaming into the wilderness.

[Virginia Woolf @TallandHouse]

So far as I could tell, the pin had something to do with one's own impotency. I cannot hold this - I cannot express this - I am overcome.

[Virginia Woolf @TallandHouse]

One looks up, all seems blown to its fullest & tautest, with beauty and beauty and beauty, a pin pricks; it collapses. But what is the pin?

[Virginia Woolf @TallandHouse]

But, I thought, there is always some sediment of irritation when the moment is as beautiful as it is now.

[Virginia Woolf @TallandHouse]

One could only watch the extraordinary efforts made by those tiny legs against an oncoming doom, which could have submerged an entire city.

[Virginia Woolf @TallandHouse]

The thought of all that life might have been had he been born in any other shape caused one to view his activities with a kind of pity.

[Virginia Woolf @TallandHouse]

Oh dear yes, I shall conquer this mood. It's a question of letting things come one after the other. Now to cook the haddock.

[Virginia Woolf @TallandHouse]

As for the beauty, as I always say when I walk the terrace after breakfast, too much for one pair of eyes.

[Virginia Woolf @TallandHouse]

Yes, I deserve a spring -- I owe nobody nothing.

[Virginia Woolf @TallandHouse]

How is one to live in such a world?

[Virginia Woolf @TallandHouse]

They want a plot, do they? They want a reason? It is not enough for them, this ordinary scene.

[Virginia Woolf @TallandHouse]

We are lying crushed under an immense manuscript of Gertrude Stein's. I cannot brisk myself up to deal with it.

[Virginia Woolf @TallandHouse]

The urgency of it all is fearful.

[Virginia Woolf @TallandHouse]

Everybody seems to be doing things for this moment only; and never again. Never again.

[Virginia Woolf @TallandHouse]

I have got so used to a shadow that I don't know if light is possible for me.

[Virginia Woolf @TallandHouse]

When one reflects upon one's pallid actual existence one shudders.

[Virginia Woolf @TallandHouse]

Why did we go on seeing each other? I wondered. What was in fact the nature of our relation?

[Virginia Woolf @TallandHouse]

He did not realise what he did. No one could enlighten him. Yet he suffered. Through the walls of his prison he had moments of realisation.

[Virginia Woolf @TallandHouse]

I was silent. I did not think him foolish. I thought him brutal.