I am no longer young... My life has passed like a ripple in water.
Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts
My dear Virginia, Five thousand words are no drawback, when the words are yours.
T. S. Eliot in a letter to Virginia Woolf (via wavingtovirginia)
Virginia Woolf’s corrected proofs for To The Lighthouse, at the Smith College Rare Book Room
I see myself as a fish in a stream; deflected; held in place;but cannot describe the stream.
Virginia Woolf, Moments of Being
Source: wavingtovirginia
Portraits of Virginia Woolf taken by George Charles Beresford July 1902.
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Unconsciously she had been walking faster and faster, her body trying to outrun her mind; but she was now on the summit of a little hillock of earth which rose above the river and displayed the valley. She was no longer able to juggle with several ideas, but must deal with the most persistent, and a kind of melancholy replaced her excitement. She sank down on to the earth clasping her knees together, and looking blankly in front of her.
Virginia Woolf, from The Voyage Out
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look at this Cool Matchbook
I know what loves are trembling into fire; how jealousy shoots its green flashes hither and thither; how intricately love crosses love; love makes knots; love brutally tears them apart. I have been knotted; I have been torn apart.
Virginia Woolf, The Waves
Source: wavingtovirginia
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“… the idea of some continuous stream, not solely of human thought, but of the ship, the night etc., all flowing together: intersected by the arrival of the bright moths. A man and a woman are to be sitting at table talking. Or shall they remain silent? It is to be a love story […]
— Virginia Woolf, from a diary entry dated, 18 June 1927
Short inspirational video on The Waves directed by Daria Darinskaya
Why can't you write? I can't stop writing. I'm ashamed to think how many stories I’ve written this month, and can hardly bear to keep my fingers off a new novel[…]
Virginia Woolf in a letter to Vita Sackville-West dated 27 May 1925
"By the truth we are undone. Life is a dream. ‘Tis the waking that kills us. He who robs us of our dreams robs us of our life."
All last night I dreamt of Katherine Mansfield & wonder what dreams are; often evoke so much more emotion, than thinking does—almost as if she came back in person & was outside one, actively making one feel; instead of a figment called up & recollected, as she is, now, if I think of her. Yet some emotion lingers on the day after a dream; even though I’ve now almost forgotten what happened in the dream, except that she was lying on a sofa in a room high up, & a great many sad faced women were round her. Yet somehow I got the feel of her, & of her as if alive again, more than by day.
Virginia Woolf, from a diary entry dated, 7 July 1928
Source: wavingtovirginia
But her grief was silent. She shut the door behind her. When she was alone by herself she clenched her fists together, and began beating the back of a chair with them. She was like a wounded animal. She hated death; she was furious, outraged, indignant with death, as if it were a living creature. She refused to relinquish her friends to death. She would not submit to dark and nothingness. She began to pace up and down, clenching her hands, and making no attempt to stop the quick tears which raced down her cheeks. She sat still at last, but she did not submit. She looked stubborn and strong when she had ceased to cry.
Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out
Source: wavingtovirginia
I'm not as simple as most women… I think I want more. I don't know exactly what I feel... I sometimes think I haven't got it in me to care very much for one person only.
Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out
Source: wavingtovirginia
Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can’t use the wrong words.… here am I sitting after half the morning, crammed with ideas, and visions, and so on, and can’t dislodge them, for lack of the right rhythm. Now this is very profound, what rhythm is, and goes far deeper than words. A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it; and in writing (such is my present belief) one has to recapture this, and set this working (which has nothing apparently to do with words) and then, as it breaks and tumbles in the mind, it makes words to fit it.
Virginia Woolf, Selected Letters
Source: wavingtovirginia
I wish you could live in my brain for a week. It is washed with the most violent waves of emotion. What about? I dont know. It begins on waking; and I never know which—shall I be happy? Shall I be miserable... I keep up some mechanical activity with my hands, setting type; ordering dinner. Without this, I should brood ceaselessly.
Virginia Woolf, from a letter to Vita Sackville-West
Source: wavingtovirginia
How can my heart, how can my heart," he repeated ... Condemned in life's infernal mine, condemned in solitude to pine …
Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts
Source: wavingtovirginia
But I’m faithful, and loving: and have met no one a patch on you—no one so comforting to be with.
Virginia Woolf, from a letter to Vita Sackville-West
Source: wavingtovirginia