Sat 20 March 1926

But what is to become of all these diaries, I asked myself yesterday. If I died, what would Leo make of them? He would be disinclined to burn them; he could not publish them. Well, he should make up a book from them, I think; & then burn the body. I daresay there is a little book in them: if the scraps & scratches were straightened out a little. God knows.

This is dictated by a slight melancholia, which comes upon me sometimes now, & makes me think I am old: I am ugly. I am repeating things. Yet, as far as I know, as a writer I am only now writing out my mind.

virginia woolf, diary

Summer 1926

Arnold Bennett says that the horror of marriage lies in its "dailiness".

virginia woolf, diary

Sat 19 November 1925

But I dont think of the future, or the past, I feast on the moment. This is the secret of happiness; but only reached now in middle age.

virginia woolf, diary

Tue. 18 November 1924

What I was going to say was that I think writing must be formal.The art must be respected. This struck me reading some of my notes here, for, if one lets the mind run loose, it becomes egotistic: personal, which I detest; like Robert Graves. At the same time the irregular fire must be there; & perhaps to loose it, one must begin by being chaotic, but not appear in public like that.

[... ] No doubt Proust could say what I mean-that great writer whom I cannot read when I'm correcting, so persuasive is he. He makes it seem easy to write well; which only means that one is slipping along on borrowed skates.

virginia woolf, diary

Wed. 19 July 1922

Never, for goodness sake, set yourself to read Balzac through & talk about it. If you must do these athletics, do them in the bathroom.

virginia woolf, diary

... of all the chemycal mixtures,
ink is the most dangerous.

jane austen, The Loiterer

Sunday 22 January 1922

The machinery for seeing friends is too primitive: one should be able to see them by telephone — ring up, & be in the same room.

virginia woolf, diary

Saturday 14 June 1919

A very severe review of Murry, a severe review of [TS] Eliot, appeared in the [Times] on Thursday. [...] Poor Murry pretended not to mind, but much like a small boy sticking it out that caning doesn't hurt.

A poem is a very sensitive part to be beaten.

virginia woolf, diary

the diary of virginia woolf

den ersten band fast fertig — 1 riesenvergnügen — aber schonmal einen blick ins vorwort von band 2 geworfen. vielversprechend.

Saturday 9 November 1918

It's just possible that Lottie may bring us news that the armistice is signed within an hour. People buy papers at a great rate; but except for an occasional buzz round a newspaper boy & a number of shop girls provided with The Evening News in the train one feels nothing different in the atmosphere. The general state perhaps is one of dazed surfeit; here we've had one great relief after another; you hear the paper boys calling out that Turkey has surrendered, or Austria given up, & the mind doesn't do very much with it; was the whole thing too remote & meaningless to come home to one, either in action or in ceasing to act? Katherine Murry, whom I saw on Wednesday, inclines to think that most people have grasped neither war nor peace. Two or three weeks ago I heard a citizen holding forth to a lady in the train, who asked him whether he thought there would be peace. "I hope not. ... We're giving them everything they want & getting nothing."

Since then it is difficult to see how the most bloodthirsty citizens can squeeze anything more out of Germany. The Kaiser still wears a phantom kind of crown. Otherwise there is revolution, & a kind of partial awakenment, one fancies, on the part of the people to the unreality of the whole affair. Suppose we wake up too?

virginia woolf, diary