A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.
Habits and customs are a convenience devised for the support of timid natures who dare not allow their souls free play.
Still, life had a way of adding day to day
Talents of the novelist: ... observation of character, analysis of emotion, people's feelings, personal relations.
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.
But words have been used too often; touched and turned, and left exposed to the dust of the street. The words we seek hang close to the tree. We come at dawn and find them sweet beneath the leaf.
war is a man's game ... the killing machine has a gender and it is male.
No sooner have you feasted on beauty with your eyes than your mind tells you that beauty is vain and beauty passes
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.
Mrs Dalloway is always giving parties to cover the silence
to teach without zest is a crime.
Each had his own business to think of. Each had his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart; and his friends could only read the title.
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.
I will go down with my colours flying.
Communication is truth; communication is happiness. To share is our duty; to go down boldly and bring to light those hidden thoughts which are the most diseased; to conceal nothing; to pretend nothing; if we are ignorant to say so; if we love our friends to let them know it.
To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others.
Nothing thicker than a knife's blade separates happiness from melancholy.
A writer should give direct certainty; explanations are so much water poured into the wine.
Well, we must wait for the future to show.
One ought to sink to the bottom of the sea, probably, and live alone with one's words.
Consolation for those moments when you can't tell whether you're the divinest genius or the greatest fool in the world.
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.
I feel my brains, like a pear, to see if it's ripe; it will be exquisite by September.
Let us not take for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small.
One should be a painter. As a writer, I feel the beauty, which is almost entirely colour, very subtle, very changeable, running over my pen, as if you poured a large jug of champagne over a hairpin.
Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends
or simply: