Virginia's Words.

I’m about two thirds of the way through To the Lighthouse now, and I decided tonight that it’s more of a writer’s book than a reader’s, given over as it is to the almost primal flow of words for their own sake, mostly making perfect sense but not always unless you concentrate very, very hard. This is not a complaint because for the past thirty years or so I’ve been more attracted to the flow of words than the flow of plot.

And then I moved on to thinking that I generally prefer good female writers to good male ones. I’ve found that they’re more inclined to look inwards rather than outwards, to reveal impressions with perfectly honed lyrical expression, to see perception as the guiding light of living, and to deal more in terms of consideration than certainty.

I suppose my fondness for such virtues stems from the fact that they echo my own aspirations in the matter of living. Then again, when I consider how I wrote my own fiction it seems I wrote like a man, so maybe it’s a matter of seeking balance. Occasionally I think that I should really be happily married like Virginia’s Mr Ramsey, and what a shame it is that I never came close to being suited to such a state.