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Posts Tagged ‘Woolf quote’

Woolf on pain relief

Posted in quotes, tagged on Thursday 4 September 2014| Leave a Comment »

Woolf quote on recording

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“Such is the cold today”

Posted in quotes, tagged , on Friday 24 January 2014| 1 Comment »

Such is the cold today that I doubt whether I can go on with my disquisition. On such a day one would need to be of solid emerald or ruby to burn with any flame, & not merely dissolve in grey atoms in the universal grey. I saw no one on Richmond High Street who seemed to be burning with the intensity of ruby or emerald–poor pinched women, absolutely mastered by circumstances, though I did hear one speak of going home to get tea ready, which suggested the possibility of some individual life for her. Diary V: 1, 30 January 1919.

It’s minus one in Ohio today, and I second Woolf’s sentiments.

A thank you to fellow-Ohioan Kimberly Engdahl Coates of Bowling Green State University for the quote, which she shared on Facebook.

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Attention, TJ shoppers: Woolf sighted at checkout

Posted in Virginia Woolf, Woolf as Commodity, Woolf sightings, tagged , , on Wednesday 4 January 2012| 3 Comments »

Sabrina Card uses the phrase "Whatever pieces" and cites Woolf's quote on her redbubble page.

I was working my way through a backed-up express line at Trader Joe’s one day over the holidays, glazing over at the impulse buys displayed near the checkstands. I glanced at a rack of greeting cards on the wall, and my eye stopped at the words: “Arrange whatever pieces come your way.”

The image on the card is catchy and colorful, with cartoonish grass, trees and mountains, and a figure juggling puzzle pieces in the sky. Virginia Woolf’s name is in small print underneath the caption.

It’s a blank card, so you can buy them in quantity and use them for all purposes. I bought one and have taped it to the wall next to my desk.

What an appropriate sentiment for the new year! Along with $5 dark roast coffee, decent cheap wines and a great selection of dark chocolate, the Trader has done it again.

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Virginia Woolf, Phi Beta Kappa?

Posted in The Waves, Virginia Woolf, Woolf sightings, tagged , , , on Wednesday 23 March 2011| Leave a Comment »

No, not really, I’m just making a playful leap.

I read a wide assortment of literary journals for the purpose of finding appropriate targets for my own creative nonfiction. Among them, though far beyond my present aspirations, is The American Scholar, the publication of Phi Beta Kappa.

A writer friend, my mentor and model, has the talent and the good fortune to have been published there a number of times, and I’ve found it to be a brilliant periodical. It’s no surprise, then, to come across Woolf in its august pages, cited twice in the Spring 2011 issue.

Doris Grumbach writes with wit and wisdom about old age in “The View from 90,” taken from her memoir, Downhill Almost All the Way, (ironic in itself, considering Leonard Woolf’s volume of autobiography, Downhill All the Way).

She tells of Somerset Maugham being asked to speak on the virtues of being old. He stood at the podium and said, “I cannot think of one,” then stepped down.

The elderly commune together socially to combat their segregation from the general population, Grumbach says, and notes that “In Mrs. Dalloway someone says that parties are held ‘to cover the silence.’”

Also in the issue is a collection of quotations on Patience collected by Anne Matthews. Along with passages from Marcus Aurelius, Walt Whitman, Garrison Keillor and others, she includes the following from The Waves:

“Certainly one cannot read this poem without effort. The page is often corrupt and mud-stained, and torn and stuck together with faded leaves, with scraps of verbena or geranium…One must put aside antipathies and jealousies and not interrupt. One must have patience and infinite care and let the light sound, whether of spiders’ delicate feet on a leaf or the chuckle of water in some irrelevant drainpipe, unfold too.”

These sightings that I stumble across, that seem to merge different areas of my life, are the ones I enjoy the most–they give me a sense of continuity and reinforcement. And as we discover repeatedly and see in the sheer numbers as well as the broad range of the sightings that Paula posts so prolifically, Virginia Woolf’s after-life is unending.

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