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 More Quotes by Virginia Woolf More Quotes From Virginia Woolf This self now as I leant over the gate looking down over fields rolling in waves of colour beneath me made no answer. He threw up no opposition. He attempted no phrase. His fist did not form. I waited. I listened. Nothing came, nothing. I cried then with a sudden conviction of complete desertion. Now there is nothing. No fin breaks the waste of this immeasurable sea. Life has destroyed me. No echo comes when I speak, no varied words. This is more truly death than the death of friends, than the death of youth. Virginia Woolf echoes self sea 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 life lying thinking 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 crafts together writing 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 perception brain feelings 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 opposites love hands Marvelous are the innocent. Virginia Woolf marvelous innocent The mind is the most capricious of insects — flitting, fluttering. Virginia Woolf fluttering capricious mind it is strange how the dead leap out on us at street corners, or in dreams Virginia Woolf chaos strange dream 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 flower mind fall 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 yield passion civilization One ought to sink to the bottom of the sea, probably, and live alone with one's words. Virginia Woolf bottom sea writing 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 finals doe writing 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 body want heart 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 lonely moon heart 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 voice winter beautiful On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points. Virginia Woolf pain funny art 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 sleep talking book 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 notebook exercise morning ... it's been a perpetual discovery, my life. A miracle. Virginia Woolf perpetual miracle discovery
