Virginia Woolf Quotes

That's the main business of the poem!-to see if you can't make up a language that sets all your selves talking at once-all of them being fair to each other.

The desire for self-expression afflicts people when they feel there is something of themselves which is not getting through to the outside world.

Clear communication between selves - the surface self and the deep self - is the enemy of self-doubt. It slays confusion.

A subject emerges from an interaction between my self, my I, and my medium.

It's our very capacity for self-consciousness that makes us self-destructive!

When we are self-conscious, we cannot be wholly aware; we must throw ourselves out first. This throwing ourselves away is the act of creativity.

What we do in life is determined by how we communicate to ourselves. In the modern world, the quality of life is the quality of communication.

A writer's self-consciousness, for which he is much scorned, is really a mode of interestedness, that inevitably turns outward.

A doctrine insulates the devout not only against the realities around them but also against their own selves. The fanatical believer is not conscious of his envy, malice, pettiness and dishonesty. There is a wall of words between his consciousness and his real self.

Self-awareness is a trait that not only makes us human but also paradoxically makes us want to be more than merely human. As I said in my BBC Reith Lectures, “Science tells us we are merely beasts, but we don’t feel like that. We feel like angels trapped inside the bodies of beasts, forever craving transcendence

I'd like to lose interest in myself.

What an odd, ruminating, noisy, self-interrupting conversation we conduct with ourselves from birth to death.

Your prospective employer, or the person you have a crush on, or the person you want to talk to. You're judging yourself, you know, thinking about your listener. You're not thinking about what you're saying. And that same thing happens when you write.

Did I express my personality? I think that's quite unimportant because it's not people's selves but what they have to say about life that's important.

You have, which is a rare thing, the ability and the responsibility to listen to the dissent in yourself. To at least give it the floor. Because it is the key, not only to consciousness, but to real growth.

One of them, for example, which will probably haunt me more than any other is the problem of communication.

Sometimes I don't get you,' I said. She didn't even glance at me. She just smiled toward the television and said, 'You never get me. That's the whole point.

Self-criticism expands the opportunities for discourse and eliminates the need for an adversary.

When you forget yourself and your fear, when you get beyond self-consciousness because your mind is thinking about what you are trying to communicate, you become a better communicator

All men contain several men inside them, and most of us bounce from one self to another without ever knowing who we are.

Well, think of what I’m doing to you right now. For me I’m the self, and you’re the object. For you, of course, it’s the exact opposite—you’re the self to you and I’m the object. And by exchanging self and object, we can project ourselves onto the other and gain self-consciousness. Volitionally.” “I still don’t get it, but it sure feels good.” “That’s the whole idea,” the girl said.

What a fool you must be," said my head to my heart, or my sterner to my softer self.

Self-consciousness is the curse of the city and all that sophistication implies.

Somehow I wasn't adding up right anymore. My parts weren't summing into myself.

I really hate being self-conscious—and being conscious of being self-conscious