Virginia Woolf on writing

I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

The history of men’s opposition to women’s emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.

Humour is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue.

To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say and to finish without knowing what you have written.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau1712–1778

• Love

Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say ‘infinitely’ when you mean ‘very’; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

C. S. Lewis1898–1963

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

Benjamin Franklin1706–1790

• Reading