“Quality and consistency of conjecture are one good measure of the ambition and the inwardness of any literary biography. The biographer is master of the archive, but also and equally master of the subjunctive mood, of un-certainty, of non-factuality.”

“The daughter of the literary biographer Leslie Stephen, and close friend of the innovative biographer of the Victorians, Lytton Strachey, Woolf herself put forward, in ‘The New Biography’ (1927) (reviewing work by another biographer acquaintance, Harold Nicolson), her own memorable theory of biography, encapsulated in her phrase ‘granite and rainbow’. ‘Truth’ she envisions ‘as something of granite-like solidity’, and ‘personality assomething of rainbow-like intangibility’, and ‘the aim of biography’, she proposes, ‘is to weld these two into one seamless whole’ (E4 473). The following short biographical account ofWoolf will attempt to keep to the basic granitelike facts that Woolf novices need to know, while also occasionally attending in brief to the more elusive, but equally relevant, matter of rainbow-like personality.”

“One is always a good master when one isn’t the master”

“The gossip will carry to Attolian spies, who will report to Relius, Attolia's master of spies, and he will carry the news to her.""Her secretary of the archives," murmured the magus."Hmm?" asked the queen."Secretary of the archives, Relius. Master of spies is so-""Accurate?""Overtly direct," said the magus.Eddis laughed.”

“I have two masters: laziness and ambition. Laziness is muscular, and ambition is brainy. When the two masters fight it out, guess who wins? That’s right, the slaves do.”

“Mood has to be controlled.Otherwise, it's your master.”