We are material creatures who spend much of our lives on material pursuits (even building a cathedral or writing a novel requires stone and mortar or paper and ink).
Virginia Postrel
Related This is no less true of steel and concrete [than of wood, brick and stone]. We must remember that ev... LUDWIG MIES VAN DER ROHE The thing that's worked for me is having as much of a connection to the material as possible. An... LARRY WILMORE Material goods consist of useful material things, and of all rights to hold, or use, or derive benef... ALFRED MARSHALL All that time that we spend tweeting our thoughts and emotions to our next of kin, we could be writi... ALEXANDRA PETRI Well, we're living in a material world, and I'm a material girl... or boy. ADAM SANDLER Well, we're living in a material world, and I'm a material girl... or boy. ADAM SANDLER We are bemused and crazed creatures, strangers to our true selves, to one another, and to the spirit... R. D. LAING My feeling is we are doing something new here. We are building a collaborative effort that will make... DAVID MANDELBROT Industrialization of the building trade is a question of material. Hence the demand for a new buildi... LUDWIG MIES VAN DER ROHE I very much dislike writing about myself or my work, and when pressed for autobiographical material ... SHIRLEY JACKSON We used a material palette that fit in with the surrounding campus. The stadium exterior had been mo... RANDY BREDAR The nexus between terrorism and nuclear weapons, or even nuclear material, is obviously a current co... MITCHELL REISS Let's be cautious about relying so much on material things that we have no energy left for the s... JAMES A. FORBES Until we know who we are and why we are here, no amount of success, fame, money, or pleasure will pr... JAMES C. DOBSON Our goal is to manage every penny of every dollar that we spend with our suppliers, be they raw mate... EVERETT TUCKER A novel, even a social realist one, can't simply be a comprehensive rendering of what is. A nove... CHANG-RAE LEE It's a nightmare. There's so much unknown material in that water. You have to assume there's a lot o... JAY GRIMES I work a little bit like a sculptor. When I start, my first idea for a building is with the material... PETER ZUMTHOR that material presents ‘testing’ as: “start spending 100% of my time on the project, form... ALAN RICHARDSON Our culture has bred consumers and addicts. We eat too much, buy too much, and want too much. We set... VIRONIKA TUGALEVA This is another simple bill to set a clear state standard to be sure state-owned or leased computers... ASSEMBLYWOMAN GARCIA This is another simple bill to set a clear state standard to be sure state-owned or leased computers... ASSEMBLYWOMAN BONNIE GARCIA Writing, for me, is an inherent part of understanding the material on a deeper level. CARY FUKUNAGA If building material is in short supply or there isn't an abundance of skilled labor, that's going t... KIP DIGGS We should never let material things get ahead of God or become so important in our lives that we can... JOYCE MEYER In the West there has always been the attempt to try make the religious building, whether it's a... TADAO ANDO All of a sudden we get this gust and the material that was on top of our roof just came down on top ... CAROLYN VALLONE In the short run, you're going to start seeing a growing demand for building material products, whic... ERIC BELSKY The talking about own material pleasure or preaching others for enjoying their monetary treasure is ... ANUJ SOMANY We spend a lifetime working hard to accumulate homes and possessions that we believe are vital for c... PAUL V. STUTZMAN My fascination with letting images repeat and repeat—or in film’s case “run on”—manifests ... J.P. DELANEY Instead of either/or, I discovered a whole world of and. GLORIA STEINEM When a culture has fallen totally away from spiritual pursuits into materialism, one must begin by d... L. RON HUBBARD The domestic lives we live - which may be accidental, or not entirely of our making - help to make p... JOYCE CAROL OATES There are 350,000 illegal aliens in the state of Georgia, ... Every dollar we spend on services for ... ERIC JOHNSON On the spiritual theory, man consists essentially of a spiritual nature or mind intimately associate... ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE You're still lovely," Mor said a bit gently. Elain offered a half smile. "I suppose that war m... SARAH J. MAAS Life is raw material. We are artisans. We can sculpt our existence into something beautiful, or deba... CATHY BETTER We either didn't have enough material on his days at Tech or he wasn't a big standout there. MARK TENNIS We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. ... CHUCK PALAHNIUK For we are all bound in stories, and as the years pile up they turn to stone, layer upon layer, buil... STEVEN ERIKSON whoever is writing your material. EDWARD EGAN More than this, even in those white men who professed religion we found much inconsistency of conduc... CHARLES EASTMAN The strewn and tangled wreckage that litters our lives is the precious raw material from which great... CRAIG D. LOUNSBROUGH We are carefully considering the material before us and expect to determine in a matter of weeks whe... GRAEME SAMUEL My fascination with letting images repeat and repeat - or in film's case 'run on' - mani... ANDY WARHOL I have always had more dread of a pen, a bottle of ink, and a sheet of paper than of a sword or pist... ALEXANDRE DUMAS We are the creatures of imagination, passion, and self-will, more than of reason or even of self-int... WILLIAM HAZLITT We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any noblen... HENRY DAVID THOREAU That which you create in beauty and goodness and truth lives on for all time to come. Don't spend yo... DENIS WAITLEY Most of us think we're too busy or too important to rest for a day. CRAIG GROESCHEL What we need is more women writers, writing for older women. There are some actresses who have produ... KATHLEEN TURNER The same parts of my brain get as excited as when I study bio or read a novel and write a paper on i... UTADA HIKARU I think most serious writers, certainly in the modern period, use their own lives or the lives of pe... CHAIM POTOK We can spend it on spay and neuter, we can spend it on the general fund, or second chance. Now that ... LISA BOYLE Men are not great or small because of their material possessions. They are great or small because of... JAMES CASH PENNEY We try to get them comfortable here with the idea of writing, and keep them writing when they leave.... ED WILKS The issue isn't whether he loved you, it's how much. Too much. Love can be poison SARAH J. MAAS I am broken and healing, but every piece of my heart belong to you. SARAH J. MAAS He thinks he'll be remembered as the villain in the story. But I forgot to tell him that the villain... SARAH J. MAAS Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold ... GEORGE R.R. MARTIN Hodor," said Hodor. GEORGE R.R. MARTIN You do what you love, what you need SARAH J. MAAS I turned. Rhysand leaned against the archway into the sitting room, arms crossed, wings nowhere... SARAH J. MAAS The process of writing a novel begins with a pang, a moment of recognition, and a situation, a chara... MARTIN AMIS In this project, we kind of started playing first instead of writing and bringing written material i... GENE LEWIN You have to edit the material. That assumes that some kind of a mind is operating in relation to the... FREDERICK WISEMAN Long before we created libraries, or even books, poetry was the way we humans remembered who we were... ROBIN COSTE LEWIS Relative to most of the energy and material flows on Earth, the machinations of humankind are puny. ... DONELLA MEADOWS Who knew paper and ink could be so vicious KATHRYN STOCKETT I’ve tried so hard to stay away from you,” he whispered one night, cuddling her while the moonli... LISA KLEYPAS Our surest protection against assault from abroad has been not all our guards, gates and guns, or ev... THEODORE C. SORENSEN Breaking stone with a hammer is a familiar and acceptable way of working the material, but is in fac... ANDY GOLDSWORTHY Short-story writing requires an exquisite sense of balance. Novelists, frankly, can get away with mo... LYNN ABBEY What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our librarie... JOHN RUSKIN We're extremely thrilled with the material we've found on Stone. He was a true pioneer in his field ... PHILIP LEWIS I was the individual who cleared on this process within Customs and Border Protection and reviewed a... JAYSON AHERN It makes me wonder, Do we spend most of our days trying to remember or forget things? Do we spend mo... MARKUS ZUSAK At the end of your lives you will not be judged by academic successes, the degrees or diplomas earne... HOWARD W. HUNTER Such short little lives our pets have to spend with us, and they spend most of it waiting for us to ... JOHN GROGAN We use paper documents to store knowledge so we can consult and reconsult it, giving us a type of re... CLIVE THOMPSON It's going to be starting within weeks. The roof material, the siding material are on order and they... JOSEPH BENINATI Our culture is hung up on and overemphasises what can be derived from material objects. I think this... TINO SEHGAL Most of what we take as being important is not material, whether it's music or feelings or love.... JUDY COLLINS I still get a lot of material but I find that as one gets older you get more fussy. You know you'... NORMAN JEWISON I have the feeling it will influence my future writing to the extent that without any material worri... ELFRIEDE JELINEK Probably our lives are full of symbols which only an unacknowledged sense perceives. Spiritual event... JULIAN HAWTHORNE Currently under FCC policy, indecency determinations hinge on two factors. First, material must desc... DOUG OSE We estimate that once Iraq acquires fissile material - whether from a foreign source or by securing ... JOHN BOLTON I don't need material things like gold and platinum records on my wall, Grammys or Hall Of Fame ... TOMMY LEE The terrifying fear of a crash had triggered the fight-or-flight response in the child, making him b... PAWAN MISHRA We live in a material world, not a dramatic one. And truth resides not in melodrama, but in the prec... RICHARD FLANAGAN It looks like a loose rock that is blacker and rougher than the material of Home Plate and so we wan... JOY CRISP We live in a material world. I'm not saying that beautiful things don't enhance our lives. B... TOM FORD For me, writing a short story is much, much harder than writing a novel. LYNN ABBEY A novel's whole pattern is rarely apparent at the outset of writing, or even at the end; that is... DIANE JOHNSON When police or prosecutors conceal significant exculpatory or impeaching material, we hold, it is or... RUTH BADER GINSBURG We never dealt with satire or suggestive material. Although some of our films were broad parodies or... STAN LAUREL It didn't meet all our ears that well because we were writing a new record and had great material an... RICKY PHILLIPS …secondhand bookstores have pilgrims. The words out of print are a call to arms for those who seek... KATHLEEN TESSARO
More Virginia Postrel
Cable companies aren't bad because they're parts of unwieldy media conglomerates. They'r... VIRGINIA POSTREL Our demand for good looks, expressed in the biting comments that ensue when public figures fall shor... VIRGINIA POSTREL Scientists appear most often in horror movies. Through childlike curiosity or God-defying hubris, th... VIRGINIA POSTREL Glamour invites us to live in a different world. It has to simultaneously be mysterious, a little bi... VIRGINIA POSTREL The mere existence of 'Buffy' proves the declinists wrong about one thing: Hollywood commerc... VIRGINIA POSTREL As a general rule, durable-goods production tends to be the most volatile sector of the economy. Sin... VIRGINIA POSTREL The biggest threat to a better life is the desire to keep the future under control - to make the wor... VIRGINIA POSTREL Kidney disease is a low-profile, unglamorous problem, a disease that disproportionately strikes mino... VIRGINIA POSTREL When Baby Boomer women started choosing hotel-like birthing centers over hospital delivery rooms, ho... VIRGINIA POSTREL As borrowers, we may feel guilty about running up debt, anxious about making payments, and resentful... VIRGINIA POSTREL A world of few choices, whether in jeans or mates, is a world in which individual differences become... VIRGINIA POSTREL Rich people in poor places want to show off their wealth. And their less affluent counterparts feel ... VIRGINIA POSTREL Americans born since World War II have grown up in a media-saturated environment. From childhood, we... VIRGINIA POSTREL The impulse for personal adornment is hard to stamp out. VIRGINIA POSTREL The goal of socialism is a fairer allocation of economic resources, which its advocates often claim ... VIRGINIA POSTREL Socialism is about claims of justice, and it is also about money: about wealth, income, physical and... VIRGINIA POSTREL Average Americans order nonfat decaf iced vanilla lattes at Starbucks and choose from 1,500 drawer p... VIRGINIA POSTREL When 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' premiered on the WB Network in 1996, American culture was in... VIRGINIA POSTREL Before it became a ubiquitous part of urban life, Starbucks was, in most American cities, a radicall... VIRGINIA POSTREL The glamour of twentieth-century air travel helped to persuade once-fearful travelers to take to the... VIRGINIA POSTREL The glamour of air travel - its aspirational meaning in the public imagination - disappeared before ... VIRGINIA POSTREL From the days of biplanes and silk scarves, the aviator has been the archetype of masculine glamour.... VIRGINIA POSTREL The Dallas model, prominent in the South and Southwest, sees a growing population as a sign of urban... VIRGINIA POSTREL Clothing creates the illusion that bodies fit an aesthetically pleasing norm. And that illusion depe... VIRGINIA POSTREL Persuasion has become a kind of force. The more the advertiser knows about what consumers want, and ... VIRGINIA POSTREL In Shakespeare's world, characters cannot trust their senses. Is the ghost in Hamlet true and tr... VIRGINIA POSTREL Most of us cluster somewhere in the middle of most statistical distributions. But there are lots of ... VIRGINIA POSTREL Society needs both parents and nonparents, both the work party and the home party. While raising chi... VIRGINIA POSTREL European nations began World War I with a glamorous vision of war, only to be psychologically shatte... VIRGINIA POSTREL If you default on your Visa bill, nobody comes to repossess your refrigerator or auction off your sh... VIRGINIA POSTREL Glamour is an imaginative process that creates a specific emotional response: a sharp mixture of pro... VIRGINIA POSTREL Like the skyscraper, the automobile, and the motion-picture palace, neon signs once symbolized popul... VIRGINIA POSTREL Cosmetics makers have always sold 'hope in a jar' - creams and potions that promise youth, b... VIRGINIA POSTREL Chains do more than bargain down prices from suppliers or divide fixed costs across a lot of units. ... VIRGINIA POSTREL The SAT is not perfect. We all know smart, knowledgeable people who do badly on standardized tests. ... VIRGINIA POSTREL The elements that create glamour are not specific styles - bias-cut gowns or lacquered furniture - b... VIRGINIA POSTREL Airline glamour never promised anything as mundane as elbow room, much less a flat bed, a massage, o... VIRGINIA POSTREL 'Frankenstein' did not invent the fear of science; the novel found its audience because it d... VIRGINIA POSTREL The Internet exposes a diversity of opinion, experience, and taste we'd been led to believe didn... VIRGINIA POSTREL Barack Obama has brought glamour back to American politics - not the faux glamour-by-association of ... VIRGINIA POSTREL We've gone from a world in which Starbucks set a cutting-edge standard for mass-market design to... VIRGINIA POSTREL Viewers don't care how big media companies are. They care whether they can dump those they don... VIRGINIA POSTREL Kidney donors don't have to be close relatives of recipients, but they do need to have the right... VIRGINIA POSTREL 'The Matrix' is a movie that is all about glamour. I could do a whole talk on 'The Matri... VIRGINIA POSTREL Living with a single kidney is almost exactly like living with two; the remaining kidney expands to ... VIRGINIA POSTREL The evergreen story of people in debt becomes even sexier in an economic downturn, when debts inevit... VIRGINIA POSTREL Though designed as a mere convenience, clothing sizes establish an unintended norm, an ideal from wh... VIRGINIA POSTREL In post-Vietnam, post-Watergate America, skeptical voters demand full disclosure of everything from ... VIRGINIA POSTREL With its fluctuating forms and needless decoration, fashion epitomizes the supposedly unproductive w... VIRGINIA POSTREL By reshaping or decorating our outer selves, we express our inner sense of self: 'I like that... VIRGINIA POSTREL Behind the criticism of fashion as an artistic medium is a highly ideological prejudice: against mar... VIRGINIA POSTREL Abundant choice doesn't force us to look for the absolute best of everything. It allows us to fi... VIRGINIA POSTREL 'CSI' has not only remained a top-rated show through seven seasons; it has had real-world co... VIRGINIA POSTREL Standardized sizes made inexpensive, off-the-rack garments economically feasible. They gave shoppers... VIRGINIA POSTREL Although people often equate them, glamour is not the same as beauty, stylishness, luxury, celebrity... VIRGINIA POSTREL Grassroots techies - the mostly unknown people who write code and start companies that don't mak... VIRGINIA POSTREL Like the 'test tube babies' born of in vitro fertilization, cloned children need not be iden... VIRGINIA POSTREL On the Net, the bell curve reclaims its tails. The uncommon is as accessible as the common. The very... VIRGINIA POSTREL Like John Kennedy in 1960, Obama combines youth, vigor, and good looks with the promise of political... VIRGINIA POSTREL Glamour is a beautiful illusion - the word 'glamour' originally meant a literal magic spell ... VIRGINIA POSTREL Religion, art, and science flourish best in a free society. True, freedom does not afford much oppor... VIRGINIA POSTREL The Internet ethos of diversity and competition runs exactly counter to uniform, gatekeeper-oriented... VIRGINIA POSTREL The children who are 'our future' will inherit a world created not just by parental devotion... VIRGINIA POSTREL Neon signs don't consume much power, but they look like they do. A cousin of fluorescent lightin... VIRGINIA POSTREL The growth of medical expenditures in the U.S. is not caused by administrative costs but by increase... VIRGINIA POSTREL When I was in college, I wanted to be editor of 'Reason' when I grew up. It was an impractic... VIRGINIA POSTREL A standard 'well woman' checkup can last as little as 10 minutes, hardly time for any in-dep... VIRGINIA POSTREL Apple doesn't need to maximize book sales. It simply needs to keep publishers happy enough to ma... VIRGINIA POSTREL The low point for neon came in 1982, when Holiday Inn did away with its signature 'Great Sign,... VIRGINIA POSTREL Internet pharmacies return to consumers the choice promised by supporters of the 1938 Food, Drug and... VIRGINIA POSTREL What makes a loft authentic isn't its layout or its history but its ability to give people a tru... VIRGINIA POSTREL Clothes are unique sculptures, dependent on a supporting human form and created to move. VIRGINIA POSTREL Loft living is the antithesis of suburban domesticity, if only because the open spaces don't eas... VIRGINIA POSTREL More than two decades after the birth of Louise Brown, and all the hysteria that surrounded her '... VIRGINIA POSTREL Like the rest of the genetic lottery, beauty is unfair. Everyone falls short of perfection, but some... VIRGINIA POSTREL The Elgin Marbles were supposed to be on the Parthenon. For many works of art, a museum is an artifi... VIRGINIA POSTREL By binding image and desire, glamour gives us pleasure, even as it heightens our yearning. It leads ... VIRGINIA POSTREL Through the 1990s, 'Reason' was a voice of 'dissident feminism,' upholding the equal... VIRGINIA POSTREL America is a mosaic not of groups but of individuals, each of whom carries a host of cultural influe... VIRGINIA POSTREL Cinema isn't just a good medium for translating graphic novels. It's specifically a good med... VIRGINIA POSTREL The Taliban outlawed wearing polish in the late 1990s, punishing some offenders by amputating a fing... VIRGINIA POSTREL The definition of an 'operating system' is bound to evolve with customer demands and technol... VIRGINIA POSTREL As discomfiting as it is to both market optimists and policy activists, a certain amount of instabil... VIRGINIA POSTREL There's a popular saying that the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.... VIRGINIA POSTREL The intimate contest for self-command never ends, and lifetime happiness requires finding the right ... VIRGINIA POSTREL For designers, the rigidity of an alphabet presents a never-ending artistic challenge: How do you do... VIRGINIA POSTREL We know beauty when we see it, and our reactions are remarkably consistent. Beauty is not just a soc... VIRGINIA POSTREL In the fall of 1978, I left the religious, conservative, biracial, slow-paced culture of South Carol... VIRGINIA POSTREL The profusion of fonts is one more product of the digital revolution. Beginning in the mid-'80s ... VIRGINIA POSTREL In a media culture, we not only judge strangers by how they look but by the images of how they look.... VIRGINIA POSTREL Traditional PCs face competition from specialty products like Palm Pilots and from the servers that ... VIRGINIA POSTREL Rising living standards - whether in a village, a region, a nation, or the world - depend first on s... VIRGINIA POSTREL Fit experts envision a future in which you'd carry your body scan in your cell phone or on a thu... VIRGINIA POSTREL Y2K hype taps our native discomfort with the realities of a dynamic, evolving social order. It eleva... VIRGINIA POSTREL Glamour is all about transcending this world and getting to an idealized, perfect place. And this is... VIRGINIA POSTREL A lot of consumers actively enjoy advertising, especially fashion print ads and clever TV commercial... VIRGINIA POSTREL Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more. VIRGINIA WOOLF Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in c... VIRGINIA WOOLF To have a successful writing career, you must be willing to sacrifice a great deal. The book, the de... VIRGINIA HENLEY We have a responsibility to help those around us and help others in need. VIRGINIA WILLIAMS One of the signs of passing youth is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as w... VIRGINIA WOOLF Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by his heart, and his friends c... VIRGINIA WOOLF I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It exp... VIRGINIA WOOLF Where the Mind is biggest, the Heart, the Senses, Magnanimity, Charity, Tolerance, Kindliness, and t... VIRGINIA WOOLF Really I don't like human nature unless all candied over with art. VIRGINIA WOOLF Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded. VIRGINIA WOOLF It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality. VIRGINIA WOOLF Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is writ... VIRGINIA WOOLF As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world. VIRGINIA WOOLF So much is asked of parents, and so little is given. VIRGINIA SATIR We must not allow other people's limited perceptions to define us. VIRGINIA SATIR Life is not what it's supposed to be. It's what it is. The way you cope with it is what make... VIRGINIA SATIR Problems are not the problem; coping is the problem. VIRGINIA SATIR There is an abundance of misinformation, exaggeration, and blatant lies being spread by interest gro... VIRGINIA FOXX It was a miserable machine, an inefficient machine, she thought, the human apparatus for painting or... VIRGINIA WOOLF The interest in life does not lie in what people do, nor even in their relations to each other, but ... VIRGINIA WOOLF So the days pass, and I ask myself whether one is not hypnotized, as a child by a silver globe, by l... VIRGINIA WOOLF For love... has two faces; one white, the other black; two bodies; one smooth, the other hairy. It h... VIRGINIA WOOLF Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all ... VIRGINIA WOOLF All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point VIRGINIA WOOLF Novels so often provide an anodyne and not an antidote, glide one into torpid slumbers instead of ro... VIRGINIA WOOLF Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written ... VIRGINIA WOOLF I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again -- as I always am when I... VIRGINIA WOOLF We are nauseated by the sight of trivial personalities decomposing in the eternity of print. VIRGINIA WOOLF I believe the greatest gift I can conceive of having from anyone is to be seen by them, heard by the... VIRGINIA SATIR Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death! VIRGINIA WOOLF It is no use trying to sum people up. One must follow hints, not exactly what is said, nor yet entir... VIRGINIA WOOLF The older one grows, the more one likes indecency. VIRGINIA WOOLF Now, aged 50, I'm just poised to shoot forth quite free straight and undeflected my bolts whatever t... VIRGINIA WOOLF At 46 one must be a miser; only have time for essentials. VIRGINIA WOOLF These are the soul's changes. I don't believe in aging. I believe in forever altering one's aspect t... VIRGINIA WOOLF It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top. VIRGINIA WOOLF I hope Britney doesn't get bummed out that Lindsey is a better singer. It is not Lindsey saying ... VIRGINIA MADSEN If we help an educated man's daughter to go to Cambridge are we not forcing her to think not abo... VIRGINIA WOOLF Growing up is losing some illusions, in order to acquire others. VIRGINIA WOOLF My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery - always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring... VIRGINIA WOOLF We can best help you to prevent war not by repeating your words and following your methods but by fi... VIRGINIA WOOLF I feel certain that I'm going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times.... VIRGINIA WOOLF As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world. VIRGINIA WOOLF What is amusing now had to be taken in desperate earnest once. VIRGINIA WOOLF It's not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it's the way people look and... VIRGINIA WOOLF I always felt that I hadn't achieved what I wanted to achieve. I always felt I could get better. Tha... VIRGINIA WADE My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery --always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring... VIRGINIA WOOLF It would be a thousand pities if women wrote like men, or lived like men, or looked like men, for if... VIRGINIA WOOLF If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure -- the relationship so secret and private compa... VIRGINIA WOOLF Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of... VIRGINIA WOOLF Why are women so much more interesting to men than men are to women? VIRGINIA WOOLF All this pitting of sex against sex, of quality against quality; all this claiming of superiority an... VIRGINIA WOOLF Different though the sexes are, they inter-mix. In every human being a vacillation from one sex to t... VIRGINIA WOOLF But when the self speaks to the self, who is speaking? The entombed soul, the spirit driven in, in,... VIRGINIA WOOLF It is curious how instinctively one protects the image of oneself from idolatry or any other handlin... VIRGINIA WOOLF Really I don't like human nature unless all candied over with art. VIRGINIA WOOLF Inevitably we look upon society, so kind to you, so harsh to us, as an ill-fitting form that distort... VIRGINIA WOOLF Every face, every shop, bedroom window, public-house, and dark square is a picture feverishly turned... VIRGINIA WOOLF The current flows fast and furious. It issues in a spate of words from the loudspeakers and the poli... VIRGINIA WOOLF That great Cathedral space which was childhood. VIRGINIA WOOLF The word-coining genius, as if thought plunged into a sea of words and came up dripping. VIRGINIA WOOLF Young women... you are, in my opinion, disgracefully ignorant. You have never made a discovery of an... VIRGINIA WOOLF Therefore if you insist upon fighting to protect me, or VIRGINIA WOOLF Our brave soldiers and support personnel are engaged in a battle as important as any the United Stat... VIRGINIA FOXX Fly high... Where the only chill that cuts through you is the wind. Where your heart pounds from exh... VIRGINIA ALISON When the body escaped mutilation, seldom did the heart go to the grave unscarred. VIRGINIA WOOLF We all indulge in the strange, pleasant process called thinking, but when it comes to saying, even t... VIRGINIA WOOLF Somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent in what ever is written down, is the form of a human... VIRGINIA WOOLF The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to fol... VIRGINIA WOOLF If we help an educated man's daughter to go to Cambridge are we not forcing her to think not about e... VIRGINIA WOOLF A masterpiece is something said once and for all, stated, finished, so that it's there complete in t... VIRGINIA WOOLF One likes people much better when they're battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than whe... VIRGINIA WOOLF The poet gives us his essence, but prose takes the mold of the body and mind. VIRGINIA WOOLF Boredom is the legitimate kingdom of the philanthropic. VIRGINIA WOOLF It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with... VIRGINIA WOOLF To enjoy freedom we have to control ourselves. VIRGINIA WOOLF Henry James seems most entirely in his element, doing that is to say what everything favors his doin... VIRGINIA WOOLF No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself. VIRGINIA WOOLF As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking. VIRGINIA WOOLF When I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke round me I am in darkness—I am nothing. VIRGINIA WOOLF If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people. VIRGINIA WOOLF I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It exp... VIRGINIA WOOLF Books are the mirrors of the soul. VIRGINIA WOOLF I will not be "famous," "great." I will go on adventuring, changing, opening my mind and my eyes, re... VIRGINIA WOOLF To depend upon a profession is a less odious form of slavery than to depend upon a father. VIRGINIA WOOLF Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the... VIRGINIA WOOLF Orlando naturally loved solitary places, vast views, and to feel himself for ever and ever and ever ... VIRGINIA WOOLF Alone, I often fall down into nothingness. I must push my foot stealthily lest I should fall off the... VIRGINIA WOOLF Melancholy were the sounds on a winter's night. VIRGINIA WOOLF Women and fiction remain, so far as I am concerned, unsolved problems. VIRGINIA WOOLF The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages. VIRGINIA WOOLF Yet Byron never made tea as you do, who fill the pot so that when you put the lid on the tea spills ... VIRGINIA WOOLF Just in case you ever foolishly forget; I'm never not thinking of you. VIRGINIA WOOLF One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well. VIRGINIA WOOLF Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of... VIRGINIA WOOLF A woman knows very well that, though a wit sends her his poems, praises her judgment, solicits her c... VIRGINIA WOOLF The connection between dress and war is not far to seek; your finest clothes are those you wear as s... VIRGINIA WOOLF But it is just when opinions universally prevail and we have added lip service to their authority th... VIRGINIA WOOLF The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only... VIRGINIA WOOLF Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do. VIRGINIA WOOLF There can be no two opinions as to what a highbrow is. He is the man or woman of thoroughbred intell... VIRGINIA WOOLF I am to be broken. I am to be derided all my life. I am to be cast up and down among these men and w... VIRGINIA WOOLF I ransack public libraries, and find them full of sunk treasure. VIRGINIA WOOLF Thus when I come to shape here at this table between my hands the story of my life and set it before... VIRGINIA WOOLF