Anna B

It may well be the sentence that for diverse reasons—because thinking about Woolf, or sickness, or essays, because trying to emulate a certain rhythm in my own writing—I’ve copied out by hand more than any other.

We have never before had access to so many perspectives, ideas, and information. Much of it is fleetingly interesting but ultimately inconsequential—not to be confused with expertise, let alone wisdom.

She took the opportunity to rein in what must have seemed syntactic and figural excesses in the work. In a passage about the invalid’s attitude to poetry, the 1930 version state

It is often said, rather casually, that truth is dissolving, that we live in the ‘post-truth era’. But truth is one of our central concepts – perhaps our most central concept – and I don’t think we can do without it.

Have I allowed myself to be so lulled, so infantilised by the ever-present, always anticipated service of this luxury resort that I have surrendered my free will, my judgement?

Loneliness arises when thought is divorced from reality, when the common world has been replaced by the tyranny of coercive logical demands.