The mind must be allowed to settle undisturbed over the object in order to secrete the pearl. Virginia Woolf More Quotes by Virginia Woolf More Quotes From Virginia Woolf But why do I notice everything? She thought. Why must I think? She did not want to think. She wanted to force her mind to become a blank and lie back, and accept quietly, tolerantly, whatever came. Virginia Woolf lifelyingthinking If only she could put them together, she felt, write them out in some sentence, then she would have got at the truth of things. Virginia Woolf craftstogetherwriting We live in constant danger of coming apart. The mystery of why we do not always come apart is the animating tension of all art. Virginia Woolf mysterydangerart The proper stuff of fiction' does not exist; everything is the proper stuff of fiction, every feeling, every thought; every quality of brain and spirit is drawn upon; no perception comes amiss. Virginia Woolf perceptionbrainfeelings For love... has two faces; one white, the other black; two bodies; one smooth, the other hairy. It has two hands, two feet, two tails, two, indeed, of every member and each one is the exact opposite of the other. Yet, so strictly are they joined together Virginia Woolf oppositeslovehands Marvelous are the innocent. Virginia Woolf marvelousinnocent The mind is the most capricious of insects — flitting, fluttering. Virginia Woolf flutteringcapriciousmind it is strange how the dead leap out on us at street corners, or in dreams Virginia Woolf chaosstrangedream All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds. Virginia Woolf flowermindfall Dance music ... stirs some barbaric instinct - lulled asleep in our sober lives - you forget centuries of civilization in a second, & yield to that strange passion which sends you madly whirling round the room. Virginia Woolf yieldpassioncivilization One ought to sink to the bottom of the sea, probably, and live alone with one's words. Virginia Woolf bottomseawriting Madness is terrific I can assure you, and not to be sniffed at; and in its lava I still find most of the things I write about. It shoots out of one everything shaped, final, not in mere driblets, as sanity does. Virginia Woolf finalsdoewriting To want and not to have, sent all up her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain. And then to want and not to have- to want and want- how that wrung the heart, and wrung it again and again! Virginia Woolf bodywantheart I went from one to the other holding my sorrow - no, not my sorrow but the incomprehensible nature of this our life - for their inspection. Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends, I to my own heart, I to seek among phrases and fragments something unbroken - I to whom there is no beauty enough in moon or tree; to whom the touch of one person with another is all, yet who cannot grasp even that, who am so imperfect, so weak, so unspeakably lonely. Virginia Woolf lonelymoonheart Thoughts without words… Can that be? Virginia Woolf Never are voices so beautiful as on a winter's evening, when dusk almost hides the body, and they seem to issue from nothingness with a note of intimacy seldom heard by day. Virginia Woolf voicewinterbeautiful On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points. Virginia Woolf painfunnyart Nothing could be slow enough, nothing lasts too long. No pleasure could equal, she thought, straightening the chairs, pushing in one book on the shelf, this having done with the triumphs of youth, lost herself in the process of living, to find it with a shock of delight, as the sun rose, as the day sank. Many a time had she gone, at Barton when they were all talking, to look at the sky; seen it between peoples shoulders at dinner; seen it in London when she could not sleep. She walked to the window. Virginia Woolf sleeptalkingbook A very elementary exercise in psychology, not to be dignified by the name of psycho-analysis, showed me, on looking at my notebook, that the sketch of the angry professor had been made in anger. Anger had snatched my pencil while I dreamt. But what was anger doing there? Interest, confusion, amusement, boredom--all these emotions I could trace and name as they succeeded each other throughout the morning. Had anger, the black snake, been lurking among them? Yes, said the sketch, anger had. Virginia Woolf notebookexercisemorning ... it's been a perpetual discovery, my life. A miracle. Virginia Woolf perpetualmiraclediscovery
