Virginia Woolf Quotes

Mirrors and images. Or sex and love. These are two separate systems that we miserably try to link.

-Why does a man live? -In order to think about it.

What to think of other people? I ask myself this question each time I make a new acquaintance. So strange does it seem to me that we exist, and that we consent to exist.

I am, therefore I'll think.

I think my music is so personal that it lets people in. And they identify with me more because of that, you know, so it's like my story; it's who I am as a person.

Sometimes, we only get to know someone as one aspect of who they are. Then you start peeling back the layers and understanding more and more about who they are - their vulnerabilities, their fears, their joys, all those other words that equal humanity.

I'm writing my story so that others might see fragments of themselves.

I really tell a lot of stories. I want people to know who I am.

In the end, I'm really interested in people and what we do with our short time here on earth. I'm interested in the human soul.

I find that when I do not think of myself I do not think at all.

Don't you think it's strange that life, described as so rich and full, a camel-trail of adventure, should shrink to this coin-sized world? A head on one side, a story on the other. Someone you loved and what happened. That's all there is when you dig in your pockets. The most significant thing is someone else's face. What else is embossed on your hands but her?

To-morrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of to-day?

Most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories.

You’re here,” I continued. “At least you look as if you’re here. But maybe you aren’t. Maybe it’s just your shadow. The real you may be someplace else. Or maybe you already disappeared, a long, long time ago. I reach out my hand to see, but you’ve hidden yourself behind a cloud of probablys. Do you think we can go on like this forever?

Our greatest illusion is to believe that we are what we think ourselves to be.

Sometimes I think, sometimes I am .

The ultimate question of who we are is set before us at all times and answered with every action.

There are so many moments to remember and sometimes I think that maybe we're not really people at all. Maybe moments are what we are.... Sometimes I just survive. But sometimes I stand on the rooftop of my existence, arms stretched out, begging for more.

To be in love is to see yourself as someone else sees you, it is to be in love with the falsified and exalted image of yourself. In love we are incapable of honor - the courageous act is no more than playing a part to an audience of two.

We have to have a version of our own story that we keep telling ourselves that allows us to get up in the morning. This version of yourself is what you sell to yourself. I think it necessarily includes ... not looking at certain things. Everybody's got some blind spot.

I can readily conceive of a man without hands or feet; and I could conceive of him without a head, if experience had not taught me that by this he thinks, Thought then, is the essence of man, and without this we cannot conceive of him.

My thought is me: that's why I can't stop. I exist because I think… and I can't stop myself from thinking. At this very moment - it's frightful - if I exist, it is because I am horrified at existing. I am the one who pulls myself from the nothingness to which I aspire.

I tell myself that I know you, and then when I think about it, I realize that I don't.

I think sex is really about the self, and really a self-reflection.

I think tension between the intimate and the vast is at the heart of every poem by any poet, though of course the terms with which it is explored vary. Perhaps it is something we seek out in order to affirm that our small lives are tethered to something large and ongoing.