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Among the many problems which beset the novelist, not the least weighty is the choice of the moment at which to begin his novel.

Vita Sackville-West

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Vita Sackville-West
Age: 70 †
Born: 1892
Born: March 9
Died: 1962
Died: June 2
Author
Biographer
Gardener
Horticulturist
Poet
Writer
Knole House
Knole
Lady Victoria Sackville-West
Victoria Mary Sackville-West
Lady Nicolson
Victoria Sackville-West
Victoria Mary Sackville-West
V. Sackville-West
Choices
Novelist
Moment
Novelists
Moments
Begin
Problem
Choice
Many
Among
Writing
Novel
Problems
Weighty
Least
Beset

More quotes by Vita Sackville-West

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that pathetic short-cut suggested by Nature the supreme joker as a remedy for our loneliness, that ephemeral communion which we persuade ourselves to be of the spirit when it is in fact only of the body - durable not even in memory!
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Women, like men, ought to have their years so glutted with freedom that they hate the very idea of freedom.
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How subtle is the relationship between the traveler and his luggage! He knows, as no one else knows, its idiosyncrasies, its contents ... and always some small nuisance which he wishes he had not brought had known, indeed, before starting that he would regret it, but brought it all the same.
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All craftsmen share a knowledge. They have heldReality down fluttering to a bench.
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See the last orange roses, how they blow / Deeper and heavier than in their prime, / In one defiant flame before they go.
Vita Sackville-West
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The Saluki is a marvel of elegance.
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The more one gardens, the more one learns And the more one learns, the more one realizes how little one knows.
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The writer catches the changes of his mind on the hop. Growth is exciting growth is dynamic and alarming. Growth of the soul, growth of the mind.
Vita Sackville-West
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The farmer and the gardener are both busy, the gardener perhaps the more excitable of the two, for he is more of the amateur, concerned with the creation of beauty rather than with the providing of food. Gardening is a luxury occupation an ornament, not a necessity, of life.
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a letter, by its arrival, defrauds us of a whole secret region of our existence, the only region indeed in which the true pleasure of life may be tasted, the region of imagination, creative and protean, the clouds and beautiful shapes of whose heaven are destroyed by the wind of reality.
Vita Sackville-West
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It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten the mood is gone life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop.
Vita Sackville-West
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What is beautiful is good, and who is good will soon be beautiful.
Vita Sackville-West
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Click, clack, click, clack, went their conversation, like so many knitting-needles, purl, plain, purl, plain, achieving a complex pattern of references, cross-references, Christian names, nicknames, and fleeting allusions.
Vita Sackville-West
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Of course I should love to throw a toothbrush into a bag, and just go, quite vaguely, without any plans or even a real destination. It is the Wanderlust.
Vita Sackville-West
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For a young man to start his career with a love affair with an older woman was quite de rigueur ... Of course, it must not go on for too long. An apprenticeship was a very different thing from a career.
Vita Sackville-West
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It is dreadful how I miss you, and everything that everybody says seems flat and stupid.
Vita Sackville-West
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Growth is exciting growth is dynamic and alarming.
Vita Sackville-West
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It is no good my telling you. One never believes other people's experiencem and one is only very gradually convinced by one's own.
Vita Sackville-West
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I worshipped dead men for their strength, Forgetting I was strong.
Vita Sackville-West
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April, the angel of the months, the young love of the year.
Vita Sackville-West