“The way to rock oneself back into writing is this. First gentle exercise in the air. Second the reading of good literature. It is a mistake to think that literature can be produced from the raw. One must get out of life...one must become externalised; very, very concentrated, all at one point, not having to draw upon the scattered parts of one's character, living in the brain.”
Virginia Woolf
A Writer's Diary
-
Working on it...
-
Working on it...
-
Working on it...
-
Working on it...
Similar quotes
“It must be a really great book because one can read it as a boy in one way, and then re-read it in middle life and get something very different out of it - and that to my mind is one of the best tests.”
C.S. Lewis
“The history of literature is very far from being one of simple progress.”
C.S. Lewis
English Literature in the Sixteenth Century: Excluding Drama
“one must first learn to live oneself before one blames others”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead
“The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.”
Gustave Flaubert
“One must not live one's life through men but must be complete on oneself as a woman of substance.”
Helen Fielding
Bridget Jones's Diary