Memory is the seamstress, and a capricious one at that. Memory runs her needle in and out, up and down, hither and thither. We know not what comes ne… - Virginia Woolf

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Engraved portrait of Virginia Woolf, facing right

Memory is the seamstress, and a capricious one at that. Memory runs her needle in and out, up and down, hither and thither. We know not what comes next, or what follows after. Thus, the most ordinary movement in the world, such as sitting down at a table and pulling the inkstand towards one, may agitate a thousand odd, disconnected fragments, now bright, now dim, hanging and bobbing and dipping and flaunting, like the underlinen of a family of fourteen on a line in a gale of wind.

English
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About Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf (25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941), born Adeline Virginia Stephen, was a British writer who is considered to be one of the foremost modernist/feminist literary figures of the twentieth century.

Biography information from Wikiquote · Portrait adapted from Wikimedia Commons (Public domain / CC0)

Also Known As

Birth Name: Adeline Virginia Stephen Adeline Virginia Alexandra Stephen
Alternative Names: Virginia Stephen Adeline Virginia Woolf Virginia Adeline Woolf Adeline Virginia Stephen Woolf Virginia Stephen Woolf Adeline Virginia Alexandra Woolf

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Additional quotes by Virginia Woolf

...she took her hand and raised her brush. For a moment it stayed trembling in a painful but exciting ecstacy in the air. Where to begin? — that was the question at what point to make the first mark? One line placed on the canvas committed her to innumerable risks, to frequent and irrevocable decisions. All that in idea seemed simple became in practice immediately complex; as the waves shape themselves symmetrically from the cliff top, but to the swimmer among them are divided by steep gulfs, and foaming crests. Still the risk must run; the mark made.

At this Helen laughed outright. "Nonsense," she said. "You're not a Christian. You've never thought what you are.—And there are lots of other questions," she continued, "though perhaps we can't ask them yet." Although they had talked so freely they were all uncomfortably conscious that they really knew nothing about each other.
"The important questions," Hewet pondered, "the really interesting ones. I doubt that one ever does ask them."
Rachel, who was slow to accept the fact that only a very few things can be said even by people who know each other well, insisted on knowing what he meant.
"Whether we've ever been in love?" she enquired. "Is that the kind of question you mean?"

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