Virginia Woolf

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”

“Why are women... so much more interesting to men than men are to women?”

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

“Nothing induces me to read a novel except when I have to make money by writing about it. I detest them.”

“It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.”

“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”

“Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.”

“Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order.”

“If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure - the relationship so secret and private compared with relations with men. Why not write about it truthfully?”

“The telephone, which interrupts the most serious conversations and cuts short the most weighty observations, has a romance of its own.”

“I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.”

“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”

“Let a man get up and say, Behold, this is the truth, and instantly I perceive a sandy cat filching a piece of fish in the background. Look, you have forgotten the cat, I say.”

“The truth is, I often like women. I like their unconventionality. I like their completeness. I like their anonymity.”

“The connection between dress and war is not far to seek your finest clothes are those you wear as soldiers.”

“This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room.”