from vita

• "darling, i have quite lost my heart."
• "and then, i don't believe one ever knows people in their own surroundings; one only knows them away, divorced from all the little strings and cobwebs of habit. long barn, knole, richmond, and bloomsbury. all too familiar and entrapping. either i am at home, and you are strange; or you are at home, and i am strange; so neither is the real essential person, and confusion results. but in the basque provinces, among a horde of zingaros, we should both be equally strange and equally real."
• "so much do i like getting them [virginia's letters], that i keep them as the last letter to open of my morning post, like a child keeps the bit of chocolate for the end–"
• "you may see in my underlining, a readiness to throw over any other engagement in order to fall in with your plans–"
• "i wish you were well and that i could see you. this is not really as selfish as it sounds, because most of all i wish that you were well, even if i were not to benefit."
• "she is so vulnerable under all her brilliance."
• "you angel, you have written"
• "please, in all this muddle of life, continue to be a bright and constant star. just a few things remain as beacons: poetry, and you, and solitude."
• "i am reduced to a thing that wants virginia."
• "i just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way."
• "but oh my dear, i can’t be clever and stand-offish with you: i love you too much for that. too truly. you have no idea how stand-offish iI can be with people i don't love. i have brought it to a fine art. but you have broken down my defences. and i don’t really resent it."
• "i think of you a terrible great deal. you make a wonderful cynical kindly smiling background to the turbulence of my brain."
• "not like virginia, who has inquisitive habits, but is a dear creature, and for whom i have a terrible and chronic homesickness. it is a persistent complaint, – sortes virginiana."
• "like a little warm coal in my heart burns your saying that you miss me. i miss you oh so much. how much, you’ll never believe or know. at every moment of the day. it is painful but also rather pleasant, if you know what i mean. i mean, that it is good to have so keen and persistent a feeling about somebody. it is a sign of vitality. (no pun intended.)"
• "as for the children, their passion for mrs woolf is rapidly on the decline. mine, alas, is not."
• "oh damn it, virginia, i wish i didn't love you so much. no i don't though; that's not true. i am glad i do. i don’t know what to say to you except that it tore the heart out of my body saying goodbye to you."
• "oh my lovely virginia, it is dreadful how i miss you, and everything that everybody says seems flat and stupid."
• "it's seven o'clock here, but only five in london – so you’re having sibyl to tea at this moment, instead of me, and she won't sit on the floor or say my lovely virginia, and you won't rumple her hair – and it won't be nearly so nice. i hope you miss me, though i could scarcely (even in the cause of vanity) wish you to miss me as much as i miss you, for that hurts too much, but what i do hope is that i've left some sort of a little blank which won't be filled till i come back."
• "i always get devastated when i hear from you. god, i do love you."
• "my darling, i'm still under the spell of being with you."
• "i like making you jealous; my darling (and shall continue to do so), but it’s ridiculous that you should be."
• "acquired me, that's what you did, like buying a puppy in a shop and leading it away on a string. still trotting after you, and still on a string."
• "i am virginia's good puppy, beating my tail on the floor, responsive to a kind pat."
• "because, really, you have no idea how miserable i am here. i almost cease to exist. i shall revive when you come, like a watered flower."
• "yes it was nice to see you, but i feel rather like a starving man given one solitary crust."

from virginia

• "i am very glad we are going to publish it, and extremely proud and indeed touched, with my childlike dazzled affection for you, that you should dedicate it to me."
• "tell me who you’ve been seeing; even if i have never heard of them – that will be all the better. i try to invent you for myself, but find i really have only 2 twigs and 3 straws to do it with. i can get the sensation ‘of seeing you’ – hair, lips, colour, height, even, now and then, the eyes and hands, but i find you going off, to walk in the garden, to play tennis, to dig, to sit smoking and talking, and then i can’t invent a thing you say."
• "vita has been twice. she is doomed to go to persia; and i mind the thought so much (thinking to lose sight of her for five years) that i conclude i am genuinely fond of her."
• "i have been dull; i have missed you. i do miss you. i shall miss you. and if you don’t believe it, you’re a long-eared owl and ass."
• "yes, i often think of you, instead of my novel; i want to take you over the water meadows in the summer on foot, i have thought of many million things to tell you."
• "i think i won't come on thursday for this reason; i must get on with writing; you would seduce me completely […]"
• "oh i'm sick of teaing, dining, reading, writing and everything, except seeing – well it is you, i admit. yes it will be nice – yes it will: and shall you be very kind to me?"
• "please come, and bathe me in serenity again."
• "then it's you being away – i am at the mercy of people, of moods, feel lonely, like something pitiable which can't make its wants known. how you have demoralised me. i was once a stalwart upstanding woman."
• "i want you this saturday more than last and so it'll go on."
• "yes yes yes i do like you. i am afraid to write the stronger word. - your virginia."
• "honey dearest, don’t go to egypt please. stay in england. love virginia. take her in your arms."
• [!!!!] "we gain in intensity what we lack in the sober comfortable virtues of a prolonged and safe and respectable and chaste and cold blooded friendship"
• "it's odd how i want you when i'm ill. i think everything would be warm and happy if vita came in."
• "potto here licks the page in love of you."