“So we discuss suicide, and the ghosts as I say, change so oddly in my mind; like people who live, & are changed by what one hears of them.
- Diary, 17 Mar 1932, IV, p.83.”
― The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume Four: 1931-1935
- Diary, 17 Mar 1932, IV, p.83.”
― The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume Four: 1931-1935
“Si on me presse de dire pourquoi je l'aimais, je sens que cela ne se peut exprimer, qu'en répondant: « Parce que c'était lui; parce que c'était moi. »”
― Essais
― Essais
“Clio is one of the most glorious of the Muses; but, as everyone knows, she (like her sister Melpomene) suffers from a sad defect: she is apt to be pompous. With her buskins, her robes, and her airs of importance she is at times, indeed, almost intolerable. But fortunately the Fates have provided a corrective. They have decreed that in her stately advances she should be accompanied by certain apish, impish creatures, who run round her tittering, pulling long noses, threatening to trip the good lady up, and even sometimes whisking to one side the corner of her drapery, and revealing her undergarments in a most indecorous manner. They are the diarists and letter-writers, the gossips and journalists of the past, the Pepyses and Horace Walpoles and Saint-Simons, whose function it is to reveal to us the littleness underlying great events and to remind us that history itself was once real life.”
―
―
“The more I read, the more I felt connected across time to other lives and deeper sympathies. I felt less isolated. I wasn’t floating on my little raft in the present; there were bridges that led over to solid ground. Yes, the past is another country, but one that we can visit, and once there we can bring back the things we need.
Literature is common ground. It is ground not managed wholly by commercial interests, nor can it be strip-mined like popular culture—exploit the new thing then move on.
There’s a lot of talk about the tame world versus the wild world. It is not only a wild nature that we need as human beings; it is the untamed open space of our imaginations.
Reading is where the wild things are.”
― Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
Literature is common ground. It is ground not managed wholly by commercial interests, nor can it be strip-mined like popular culture—exploit the new thing then move on.
There’s a lot of talk about the tame world versus the wild world. It is not only a wild nature that we need as human beings; it is the untamed open space of our imaginations.
Reading is where the wild things are.”
― Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
Sam’s 2025 Year in Books
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