Virginia Woolf
English novelist and essayist
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
When I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke around me I am in darkness — I am nothing. I only come into existence when the plumber, or the horse dealers, or whoever it may be, says something which sets me alight. Then how lovely the smoke of my phrase is, rising and falling, flaunting and falling, upon red lobsters and yellow fruit, wreathing them into one beauty.
—Virginia Woolf, English novelist and essayist, The Waves, 1931
Posted on May 1, 2000 at 6:58 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
The current flows fast and furious. It issues in a spate of words from the loudspeakers and the politicians. Every day they tell us that we are a free people fighting to defend freedom. That is the current that has whirled the young airman up into the sky and keeps him circulating there among the clouds. Down here, with a roof to cover us and a gasmask handy, it is our business to puncture gasbags and discover the seeds of truth.
—Virginia Woolf, English novelist and essayist, New Republic, October 21, 1940
Posted on November 1, 2000 at 11:44 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Methinks the human method of expression by sound of tongue is very elementary, & ought to be substituted for some ingenious invention which should be able to give vent to at least six coherent sentences at once.
—Virginia Woolf, English novelist and essayist, A Terrible Tragedy in a Duckpond, 1899
Posted on June 12, 2002 at 8:58 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
I want the concentration & the romance, & the words all glued together, fused, glowing: have no time to waste any more on prose.
—Virginia Woolf, English novelist and essayist, The Diary of Virginia Woolf
Posted on July 2, 2001 at 9:58 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
We can best help you to prevent war not by repeating your words and following your methods but by finding new words and creating new methods.
—Virginia Woolf, English novelist and essayist, Three Guineas
Posted on November 13, 2001 at 8:50 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
The word-coining genius, as if thought plunged into a sea of words and came up dripping.
—Virginia Woolf, English novelist and essayist
Posted on February 6, 2002 at 5:21 PM
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