On making art:

“She could see it all so clearly, so commandingly, when she looked: it was when she took her brush in her hand that the whole thing changed. It was in that moment’s flight between the picture and her canvas that the demons set on her who often brought her to the verge or tears and made this passage from conception to work as dreadful as down any dark passage for a child (22).”

On communication in marriage:

“She never could say what she felt… He was watching her. She knew what he was thinking. You are more beautiful than ever. And she felt herself very beautiful… She began to smile, for though she had not said a word, he knew, of course he knew, that she loved him…
‘Yes, you were right’… And she looked at him smiling. For she had triumphed again. She had not said it: Yet he knew.”

– To the Lighthouse