Virginia Woolf Quotes

A 'harmonized' life these days sounds like a tall order. Between housework, homework, workwork, and busywork, there are perpetually too many things to do, and not enough time to find that mythical balance. Nothing is more frustrating than feeling like you're doing doing doing but getting nothing truly done that you really want.

Reflection is not something you have a lot of time for.

We're all confounded by a lack of time.

The trouble with everything, these days, for me, is time. There is only one me. There are a ridiculous number of demands on my time. There are so many things I'm trying to do. It's so much more about when I'm going to get time to do it, if I get time.

I sit in my new room and write everything down. My heart never stops talking.

I am ashamed every day, and more ashamed the next. But I will spend the rest of my life in this living space writing these notes, this journal, recording my acts and reflections, finding some honor, some worth at the bottom of things. I want ten thousand pages that will stop the world.

A writer is rarely so well inspired as when he talks about himself.

Where do I find the time for not reading so many books?

There is never enough time, unless you're serving it.

When one does a thing, it appears good, otherwise one would not write it. Only later comes reflection, and one discards or accepts the thing. Time is the best censor, and patience a most excellent teacher.

How truly does this journal contain my real and undisguised thoughts--I always write it according to the humour I am in, and if astranger was to think it worth reading, how capricious--insolent & whimsical I must appear!--one moment flighty and half mad,--the next sad and melancholy. No matter! Its truth and simplicity are its sole recommendations.

I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.

I think that I failed by not studying more, and praying more, and spending more time with my family.

I haven't had the time to do a lot of writing. But nothing's really changed about me. It's just my day-to-day activities have changed, and as a person, I have to adapt to those changes.

I want to write, but more than that, I want to bring out all kinds of things that lie buried deep in my heart.

Never before have we had so little time in which to do so much.

I have undertaken, you see, to write not only my life, but my opinions also; hoping and expecting that your knowledge of my character, and of what kind of a mortal I am, by the one, would give you a better relish for the other: As you proceed further with me, the slight acquaintance which is now beginning betwixt us, will grow into familiarity; and that, unless one of us is in fault, will terminate in friendship.

It means abandoning being a poet, abandoning your careerism, abandoning even the idea of writing any poetry, really abandoning, giving up as hopeless - abandoning the possibility of really expressing yourself to the nations of the world. Abandoning the idea of being a prophet with honor and dignity, and abandoning the glory of poetry and just settling down in the muck of your own mindYou really have to make a resolution to write for yourself, in the sense of not writing to impress yourself, but just writing what your self is saying.

My art is rooted in a single reflection: why am I not as others are? ... my art gives meaning to my life.

So much working, reading, thinking, living to do! A lifetime is not long enough.

The diary will really try and tell people who you are and what you were. The alternative is writing nothing, or creating a totally lifeless, as it is leafless, garden.

I'm not a very organized person for being uber work-obsessed. I struggle to keep it all organized because everything can become important and, when you have so many spinning plates, they sometimes can cancel each other out because you lose track of everything.

I usually don't write about my life right when it happens. I process it, and I store it away. Then, when I get in the mood I pull the stuff back out.

Which is why I am writing this book. To think. To understand. It just happens to be the way I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.

I actually didn't want to have control of the writing on my first album. To write, you have to have time to connect with yourself. I don't have that time right now, because I'm so busy.