Those comfortably padded lunatic asylums which are known, euphemistically, as the stately homes of England. – Virginia Woolf
Nothing induces me to read a novel except when I have to make money by writing about it. I detest them. – Virginia Woolf
It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others. – Virginia Woolf
Dr. Richard Bentley (1662-1742)… is said one day, on finding his son reading a novel, to have remarked—’Why read a book that you cannot quote?’— a saying which affords an amusing illustration of the nature and object of his literary studies. – Cyclopædia of English Literature edited by Robert Chambers, 1844