Some of Virginia Woolf’s thoughts about her diary, transcribed from the “extras” section of the DVD of “The Hours”:  

“What sort of diary should I like mine to be? Something loose-knit, and yet not slovenly; so elastic that it will embrace anything – solemn, slight or beautiful – that comes into my mind.

“I should like it to resemble some deep, old desk; a capacious hold-all in which one flings a mass of odds and ends without looking them through.

“I should like to come back after a year or two, and find that the collection had sorted itself; and refined itself; and coalesced – as such deposits so mysteriously do – into a mold; transparent enough to reflect the light of our life; and yet steady, tranquil compounds with the aloofness of a work of art.”

From the same source; the son of a woman who was a friend of Woolf’s recalls what she said to him:

“She once said to me, ‘Nothing has really happened until it’s been described.’ And she meant described in words.

” ‘Therefore,’ she said, ‘Write a lot of letters to your family and friends. Keep a diary,’ she said. ‘Don’t let a day pass without recording it, whether anything interesting has happened or not. Something interesting happens every day,’ she said.”

Advertisement