My castle, my books.

Virginia Woolf by Lady Ottoline Morrell, 1926

Began The Diary of Virginia Woolf (vol. 1 of 5), in the bath last night. Coral perched on the edge, and slunk away with a damp left hind paw. Expect Woolf here, day and night. Though I'm certain you already did.

for green eyes, leonard and leonard disposed of cigarettes.

Leonard in 1931

Of all the beautiful words I have read by Virginia Woolf, these struck me as being amongst the most plaintive. They are excerpted from a letter to Vita Sackville-West, quoted in Virgina Woolf: A Biography by Quentin Bell, and were written seven days before Virginia was to set off with Vita for a vacation in France, leaving behind her husband, Leonard:

"I am melancholy, and excited in turn. You see, I would not have married Leonard had I not preferred living with him to saying goodbye to him."

Leonard in 1966

And speaking of Virginia's dear Vera, I am selling a first edition of her Saint Joan of Arc in my etsy shop .

My castle, my books.

Virginia & Leonard Woolf, 1939 by Gisèle Freund

Unceremoniously, yet joyfully returned to the copy of Between the Acts that I began and abandoned on a return voyage from Buenos Aires. Upon completion of Between the Acts, Virginia Woolf filled the pockets of her overcoat with stones, and laid herself to rest in the River Ouse. She left behind one of the greatest oeuvres of the 20th century, and a letter for her husband, Leonard.

Guess who I wish was coming to dinner.

Unlike coffee, olives, and Virginia Woolf, and like Joni Mitchell, Katharine Hepburn was an acquired taste for me. Once acquired, the need, like the need for coffee, has become rather insatiable. It began a number of years ago, as I was about to embark on an academic career at Hepburn's alma mater, Bryn Mawr College. I left Bryn Mawr after a year, but the lady stays with me.

One thing for a fantasy

late 19th century American sled, wrought iron swan necks and heads, $1400

It's an easy business to begin, but you must protect it, not expose it to real life. Begin with a plan for painted nails, or the tilt of Anna Mouglalis's mouth, or the smell of morning coffee as snow begins to fall. Imagine a vestibule, marble console, long mirror. Think of Virginia Woolf, April in Paris, spring in Mexico. Draw connections. Be a spider, pull, pull, pull. Paint the picture in parts. You are whole, it will be whole.

Again and again, and again and again, for this is perfect and it makes my heart sing

Pillar Garden, The Courts by Beth Dow, who also photographed Sissinghurst

It is bound to be imperfect. But I think it possible that I have got my statues against the sky. -Virginia Woolf, from her diaries

Writers' Rooms/ The ba-humbug, give me my books beat marches on.

John Mortimer
I try to write as early as possible in the morning, and aim to write 1,000 words a day.
I stop at lunchtime, have a drink and then fall asleep.

Jonathan Safran Foer
While the facilities here are vastly (and suspiciously) inferior in every way, the most remarkable difference between this library and the one in Manhattan is to be found in what's considered acceptable behavior. In Brooklyn, people regularly carry on cellphone conversations at their desks... regularly have conversations (which are regularly about illicit things), regularly fall asleep... regularly prepare and eat meals...and get in scarily heated arguments with the roaming policemen about what's acceptable behaviour. It's my best argument for why Brooklyn is the superior borough:
it's real.
(Caveat: Outside the library, I found that the seat of my bicycle had been stolen. Is this a great country or what?)

Virginia Woolf
This was where Leonard came out in July 1931 to tell her that The Waves, which he had just finished reading, was a masterpiece. This was where she struggled for months on end with The Years, trying to cut down on her smoking (from six or seven to one a morning in 1934). This was where, on Friday March 28, 1941, on a cold spring morning, she wrote a farewell letter to Leonard before walking down to the River Ouse, leaving her papers in disarray, with several revisions of her last essay on Mrs Thrale in the waste-paper basket and immense numbers of typewritten sheets lying about the room.

photos and text from the Guardian's Writers' Rooms series

New towels and new sheets, a lavender plant, and a hibiscus tree.

1900 frm Life

She took the little silver cream jug and let the smooth fluid curl luxuriously into her coffee, to which she added a shovel full of brown sugar candy. Sensuously, rhythmically, she stirred the mixture round and round. -Between the Acts, Virginia Woolf

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