Lytton [Strachey] is still alive this morning. We thought he could not live through the night. It was a moonlit night. Nessa [her sister] rang up at 10 to say that he has taken milk and tea after an injection. He had taken nothing for 24 hours and was only half-conscious. This may be the turn or it may be nothing. Now again all one’s sense of him flies out and expands and I begin to think of things I shall say to him, so strange is the desire for life. – Virginia Woolf”s Diary, 25 December 1931

For quotes from more authors regarding their Christmas week blues, read this Dec. 22, 2014, article in The Independent.