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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
Moments
Begin
Problem
Choice
Many
Among
Writing
Novel
Problems
Weighty
Least
Beset
Choices
Novelist
Moment
Novelists

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Successful gardening is not necessarily a question of wealth, it is a question of love, taste, and knowledge.
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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?
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Travel is in sad case. It is uncomfortable, it is expensive it is a source of annoyance to our friends, and of loneliness to ourselves.
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I do not like January very much. It is too stationary. Not enough happens. I like the evidences of life, and in January there are too few of them.
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It is dreadful how I miss you, and everything that everybody says seems flat and stupid.
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Not seeing is half-believing.
Vita Sackville-West
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Forget not bees in winter, though they sleep.
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I cannot bear that you / Should think me faithful, when I am untrue.
Vita Sackville-West
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I miss you even more than I could have believed and I was prepared to miss you a good deal.
Vita Sackville-West
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The public, as a whole, finds reassurance in longevity, and, after the necessary interlude of reaction, is disposed to recognize extreme old age as a sign of excellence. The long-liver has triumphed over at least one of man's initial handicaps: the brevity of life.
Vita Sackville-West
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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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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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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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Everywhere bees go racing with the hours, / For every bee becomes a drunken lover, / Standing upon his head to sup the flowers.
Vita Sackville-West
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April, the angel of the months, the young love of the year.
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!
Vita Sackville-West
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A good start in life is as important to plants as it is to children: they must develop strong roots in a congenial soil, otherwise they will never make the growth that will serve them richly according to their needs in their adult life.
Vita Sackville-West
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I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. 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 I 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.
Vita Sackville-West
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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.
Vita Sackville-West