“It seems that a profound, impartial, and absolutely just opinion of our fellow-creatures is utterly unknown. Either we are men, or we are women. Either we are cold, or we are sentimental. Either we are young, or growing old. In any case life is but a procession of shadows, and God knows why it is that we embrace them so eagerly, and see them depart with such anguish, being shadows. And why, if this -- and much more than this is true -- why are we yet surprised in the window corner by a sudden vision that the young man in the chair is of all things in the world the most real, the most solid, the best known to us--why indeed? For the moment after we know nothing about him.Such is the manner of our seeing. Such the conditions of our love.”

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About Virginia Woolf

English writer, 20th-century modernist author

Virginia Woolf was an English writer and a major modernist author of the 20th century. She is especially known for helping to pioneer stream of consciousness narration in fiction. Her work helped shape modern literature through its formal experimentation and attention to inner thought. She is remembered above all for the narrative technique she helped develop, which became influential in later writing.

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Books by Virginia Woolf

A Room of One's Own

An essay on women and writing.

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