Virginia Woolf

Nigel Nicolson

The Letters of Virginia Woolf

Entries interrupted only by her periodic breakdowns record the daily events and activities, enthusiasms and disappointments, and writing tasks in Virginia Woolf's life and her responses to people, books, and her own work

The Diary of Virginia Woolf

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"Even in that horrid state of selfish vanity, I did not know the extent of the injury I meditated, because I did not then know what it was to love. But have I ever known it?—Well may it be doubted; for, had I really loved, could I have sacrificed my feelings to vanity, to avarice?—or, what is more, could I have sacrificed hers?—But I have done it. To avoid a comparative poverty, which her affection and her society would have deprived of all its horrors, I have, by raising myself to affluence, lost every thing that could make it a blessing."

"Anyhow, nothing is more fascinating than a live person; always changing, resisting, and yielding against one's forecast..."

"...so divine it is, coming in from a walk to have tea by the fire & then read & read—say Othello—say anything. It doesn't seem to matter what. But one's faculties are so oddly clarified that the phar detaches itself in it's true meaning & lies as if illumined, before one's eyes; seen whole & truly not in jerks & spasms..."

"All I can do is to unsay all I have said; & to say what I really mean. It's a bad habit writing novels—it falsifies life, I think."

"The future is dark, which is on the whole, the best thing the future can be, I think."

"At this moment, I feel as if the human race had no character at all—sought for nothing, believed in nothing, & fought only from a dreary sense of duty."

"I know that with the first chink of light in the hall & chatter of voices i should become intoxicated, & determine that life held nothing comparable to a party. I should see beautiful people, & get a sensation of being on the highest crest of the biggest wave—right in the center and swim of things. On the third & final hand, the evenings reading by the fire here—reading Michelet and The Idiot, & smoking & talking to L. in what stands for slippers and dressing gown—are heavenly too."

The Letters of Virginia Woolf

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