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Virginia Woolf Quotes about Writing - Page 2

All Virginia Woolf Quotes Adventure Age Aging Art Beach Beauty Belief Bitterness Blame Bones Chaos Character Charity Children Communication Consciousness Country Creativity Criticism Darkness Death Desire Difficulty Diversity Doubt Duty Dying Earth Effort Essays Feelings Feminism Fighting Flying Freedom Friendship Funny Genius Giving Goodness Growing Up Happiness Hate Hatred Healing Heart Heaven History Home Honesty House Human Nature Hurt Illness Imagination Independence Inspiration Inspirational Intimacy Joy Judging Language Life Literature Love Lust Lying Madness Memories Moon Morning Motivational Nature Pain Passion Past Peace Perception Personality Philosophy Pleasure Praise Quality Reading Reality Reflection Running Sadness Safety Silence Silver Singing Skins Sleep Solitude Soul Spring Stress Style Suffering Tea Time Today Tragedy Travel Truth Vision Waiting Wall War Water Weed Wine Winter Writing quotes

As for my next book, I won't write it till it has grown heavy in my mind like a ripe pear; pendant, gravid, asking to be cut or it will fall.

As for my next book, I won't write it till it has grown heavy in my mind like a ripe pear; pendant, gravid, asking to be cut or it will fall.

Book, Fall, Writing

Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.

Writing, Prose And Poetry, Poetry Is

Virginia Woolf (2013). “The Common Reader”, p.61, Lulu Press, Inc

For once the disease of reading has laid upon the system it weakens so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the ink pot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing.

Fall, Reading, Writing

Virginia Woolf, Michael H. Whitworth (2014). “Orlando: A Biography”, p.46, Oxford University Press, USA

Here was a woman about the year 1800 writing without hate, without bitterness, without fear, without protest, without preaching. That was how Shakespeare wrote, I thought, looking at Antony and Cleopatra; and when people compare Shakespeare and Jane Austen, they may mean that the minds of both had consumed all impediments; and for that reason we do not know Jane Austen and we do not know Shakespeare, and for that reason Jane Austen pervades every word that she wrote, and so does Shakespeare.

Hate, Writing, Mean

Virginia Woolf (2015). “A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas”, p.111, OUP Oxford

I think writing, my writing, is a species of mediumship. I become the person.

Writing, Thinking, Species

Virginia Woolf (2003). “A Writer's Diary”, p.286, HMH

Mr. Beerbohm in his way is perfect ... He has brought personality into literature, not unconsciously and impurely, but so consciously and purely that we do not know whether there is any relation between Max the essayist and Mr. Beerbohm the man. We only know that the spirit of personality permeates every word that he writes ... He is without doubt the prince of his profession.

Writing, Men, Perfect

I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again - as I always am when I write.

Writing, Thinking, Mood

Virginia Woolf (1980). “The Diary of Virginia Woolf: 1925-1930”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

Words, English words, are full of echoes, of memories, of associations. They have been out and about, on people's lips, in their houses, in the streets, in the fields, for so many centuries. And that is one of the chief difficulties in writing them today -- that they are stored with other meanings, with other memories, and they have contracted so many famous marriages in the past.

Marriage, Memories, Writing

What has praise and fame to do with poetry? Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice? So that all this chatter and praise, and blame and meeting people who admired one and meeting people who did not admire one was as ill suited as could be to the thing itself- a voice answering a voice.

Writing, Voice, People

Virginia Woolf (2012). “Orlando: A Biography”, p.306, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Lord, how tired one gets of one's own writing.

Writing, Tired, Lord

Virginia Woolf (2003). “A Writer's Diary”, p.189, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything.

Determination, Book, Writing

Virginia Woolf (2003). “A Writer's Diary”, p.37, HMH

But what is more to the point is my belief that the habit of writing thus for my own eye only is good practice. It loosens the ligaments. Never mind the misses and the stumbles.

Writing, Eye, Practice

Virginia Woolf (2003). “A Writer's Diary”, p.25, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice?

Writing, Voice, Secret

Virginia Woolf (2012). “Orlando: A Biography”, p.306, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in not out.

Writing, Quality, Literature

1925 The Common Reader, 'The Modern Essay'.

The habit of writing for my eye is good practice. It loosens the ligaments.

Eye, Writing, Practice

So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery, and the sacrifice of wealth and chastity which used to be said to be the greatest of human disasters, a mere flea-bite in comparison.

Writing, Sacrifice, Hair

Virginia Woolf, Hermione Lee (2000). “A room of one's own and other essays”

So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.

Writing, Long, Wish

Virginia Woolf (2005). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.628, Wordsworth Editions

We are nauseated by the sight of trivial personalities decomposing in the eternity of print.

Writing, Sight, Personality

The Common Reader (1925) "The Modern Essay"

A thousand things to be written had I time: had I power. A very little writing uses up my capacity for writing.

Writing, Use, Littles

Virginia Woolf (2003). “A Writer's Diary”, p.123, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

To write weekly, to write daily, to write shortly, to write for busy people catching trains in the morning or for tired people coming home in the evening, is a heartbreaking task for men who know good writing from bad. They do it, but instinctively draw out of harm's way anything precious that might be damaged by contact with the public, or anything sharp that might irritate its skin.

Morning, Home, Writing

Virginia Woolf, David Bradshaw (2009). “Selected Essays”, p.20, Oxford University Press

to write a novel in the heart of London is next to an impossibility. I feel as if I were nailing a flag to the top of a mast in a raging gale.

Writing, Heart, Flags

Virginia Woolf, Joanne Trautmann Banks (1977). “A change of perspective”, Vintage

Why does one write these books after all? The drudgery, the misery, the grind, are forgotten everytime; and one launches another, and it seems sheer joy and buoyancy.

Book, Writing, Joy

Virginia Woolf, Joanne Trautmann Banks (1975). “The Letters of Virginia Woolf: 1923-1928”, Harcourt on Demand

If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure - the relationship so secret and private compared with relations with men. Why not write about it truthfully?

Women, Writing, Secret

Virginia Woolf (2003). “A Writer's Diary”, p.79, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

People ask me why I write. I write to find out what I know.

Writing, People, Ask Me

I must try to set aside half an hour in some part of my day, and consecrate it to diary writing. Give it a name and a place, and then perhaps, such is the human mind, I shall come to think it a duty, and disregard other duties for it.

Writing, Thinking, Names

"A Moment's Liberty". Book by Virginia Woolf, 1990.

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