"The extraordinary woman depends on the ordinary woman. It is only when we know what were the conditions of the average woman's life - the number of children, whether she had money of her own, if she had a room to herself, whether she had help bringing up her family, if she had servants, whether part of the housework was her task - it is only when we can measure the way of life and experience made possible to the ordinary woman that we can account for the success or failure of the extraordinary woman as a writer."

18 likes

Source: Virginia Woolf (1980). “Virginia Woolf, women and writing”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

About the author

Virginia Woolf

Novelist

Virginia Woolf was a British author known for her modernist literature and pioneering feminist ideas, particularly in 'Mrs. Dalloway' and 'A Room of One's Own'.

All quotes by Virginia Woolf →

Same author

More quotes by Virginia Woolf

See all →
Virginia Woolf Novelist

"She dares me to pour myself out like a living waterfall. She dares me to enter the soul that is more than my own; she extinguishes fear in mere seconds. She lets light come through."

Read quote
Virginia Woolf Novelist

"Waves of hands, hesitations at street corners, someone dropping a cigarette into the gutter-all are stories. But which is the true story? That I do not know. Hence I keep my phrases hung like clothes in a cupboard, waiting for some one to wear them. Thus waiting, thus speculating, making this note and then an· other I do not cling to life. I shall be brushed like a bee from a sunflower. My philosophy, always accumulating, welling up moment by moment, runs like quicksilver a dozen ways at once."

Read quote