Harriet ✿

“This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room.”
― Virginia Woolf

“consciences r 4 bone clocks marinus, u r 1 beaten woman”
― David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks

“One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“You who come of a younger and happier generation may not have heard of her—you may not know what I mean by The Angel in the House. [...] She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself daily. [...] She was pure. [...] She slipped behind me and whispered: 'My dear, you are a young woman. [...] Be sympathetic; be tender; flatter; deceive; use all the arts and wiles of our sex. Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own. Above all, be pure. [...] I turned upon her and caught her by the throat. I did my best to kill her. My excuse, if I were to be had up in a court of law, would be that I acted in self-defense. Had I not killed her she would have killed me. [...] Indeed it will be a long time still, I think, before a woman can sit down...without finding a phantom to be slain, a rock to be dashed against.”
― Virginia Woolf