Virginia Woolf Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.

  Virginia Woolf

  Freedom, Women, Reading

  Virginia Woolf (2005). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.610, Wordsworth Editions

• A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.

  Virginia Woolf

  Women, Writing, Words Of Wisdom

  A Room of One's Own ch. 1 (1929)

• 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.

  Virginia Woolf

  Determination, Book, Writing

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

• I want to write a novel about Silence," he said; “the things people don’t say.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, People, Silence

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.194, Delphi Classics

• I meant to write about death, only life came breaking in as usual

  Virginia Woolf

  Optimistic, Writing, Usual

  Virginia Woolf (1978). “The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Vol.2, 1920-1924”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

• Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Men, Others Opinions

  A Room of One's Own (1929) ch. 3

• Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Soul, Secret

  Virginia Woolf, Michael H. Whitworth (2014). “Orlando: A Biography”, p.122, Oxford University Press, USA

• Arrange whatever pieces come your way.

  Virginia Woolf

  Education, Laughter, Inspiration

  Virginia Woolf (2003). “A Writer's Diary”, p.92, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• As I grow old I hate the writing of letters more and more, and like getting them better and better.

  Virginia Woolf

  Hate, Writing, Letters

  Virginia Woolf (1975). “The letters of Virginia Woolf”

• 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

  Writing, Doe, Finals

  Virginia Woolf, Nigel Nicolson (1979). “The Letters of Virginia Woolf: 1929-1931”, Harcourt on Demand

• When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet. . . indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

  Virginia Woolf

  Wise, Mother, Writing

  A Room of One's Own ch. 3 (1929)

• 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.

  Virginia Woolf

  Book, Fall, Writing

• Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible.

  Virginia Woolf

  Life, Writing, Attachment

• 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

  Writing, Together, Crafts

  Virginia Woolf (2006). “To the Lighthouse”, p.4, OUP Oxford

• When I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke round me I am in darkness—I am nothing.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Darkness, Existence

  Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Waves”, p.97, Virginia Woolf

• For it would seem - her case proved it - that we write, not with the fingers, but with the whole person. The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre of our being, threads the heart, pierces the liver.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Heart, Wind

  Virginia Woolf (2015). “Orlando”, p.149, Booklassic

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

  Virginia Woolf

  Eye, Writing, Practice

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

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Prose And Poetry, Poetry Is

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

• 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.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Quality, Literature

  1925 The Common Reader, 'The Modern Essay'.

• I am writing to a rhythm and not to a plot.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Plot, Rhythm

  Virginia Woolf (2000). “The Waves”, p.5, Wordsworth Editions

• I mean it's the writing, not the being read, that excites me.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Joy

  "A Writer's Diary".

• 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.

  Virginia Woolf

  Fall, Reading, Writing

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

• 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.

  Virginia Woolf

  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?

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Voice, Secret

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

• 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.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Voice, People

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

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