Virginia Woolf

"With twice his wits, she had to see things through his eyes -- one of the tragedies of married life."

"It flattered her, where she was most susceptible of flattery, to think how, wound about in their hearts, however long they lived she would be woven..."

"The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness."

"Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame."

"Alone, I often fall down into nothingness. I must push my foot stealthily lest I should fall off the edge of the world into nothingness. I have to bang my head against some hard door to call myself back to the body."

"He would argue with her about killing themselves; and explain how wicked people were; how he could see them making up lies as they passed in the street. He knew all their thoughts, he said; he knew everything. He knew the meaning of the world, he said."

"It's too short,' she said, 'ever so much too short.' Never did anybody look so sad. Bitter and black, half-way down, in the darkness, in the shaft which ran from the sunlight to the depths, perhaps a tear formed; a tear fell; the waters swayed this way and that, received it, and were at rest. Never did anybody look so sad."

"Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money."

"The most important thing is not to think very much about oneself. To investigate candidly the charge; but not fussily, not very anxiously. On no account to retaliate by going to the other extreme -- thinking too much."

"Fatigue is the safest sleeping draught."

"He looked very old. He looked, James thought, getting his head now against the Lighthouse, now against the waste of waters running away into the open, like some old stone lying on the sand; he looked as if he had become physically what was always at the back of both of their minds—that loneliness which was for both of them the truth about things."

"...It struck her, this was tragedy-- not palls, dust, and the shroud; but children coerced, their spirits subdued."