“I told you in the course of this paper that Shakespeare had a sister; but do not look for her in Sir Sidney Lee's life of the poet. She died young — alas, she never wrote a word... Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the cross-roads still lives. She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here to-night, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh.”
More from Virginia Woolf
“I must open the little trap-door and let out these linked phrases in which I run together…”
“I have a deeply hidden and inarticulate desire for something beyond the daily life.”
“They sang as if the edge of being were sharpened and must cut, must split the softness of…”
“I am like the foam that races over the beach or the moonlight that falls arrow-like here…”