Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answeri... - Virginia Woolf, Orlando

"Better was it to go unknown and leave behind you an arch, then to burn like a meteor and leave no dust."

"No passion is stronger in the breast of a man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high."

"Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice?"

"For while directly we say that it [the length of human life] is ages long, we are reminded that it is briefer than the fall of a rose leaf to the ground."

"Green in nature is one thing, green in literature another. Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them together and they tear each other to pieces."