Vita Sackville West Quotes

“...How I adore you and want you. You can't know how much...I love belonging to you-- I glory in it, that you alone have bent me to your will, shattered my self-possession, robbed me of my mystery, and made me yours, so that away from you I am nothing but a useless puppet, an empty husk.”
― Violet Trefusis, Violet to Vita: The Letters of Violet Trefusis to Vita Sackville-West, 1910-1921

“Yes, dearest Vita: I do miss you; I think of you: I have a million things, not so much to say, as to sink into you.”
― Virginia Woolf

“I think I won't come on Thursday for this reason; I must get on with writing; you would seduce me completely [...]”
― Virginia Woolf

“I have a perfectly romantic and no doubt untrue vision of you in my mind – stamping out the hops in a great vat in Kent – stark naked, brown as a satyr, and very beautiful. Don't tell me this is all illusion [...]”
― Virginia Woolf

“I enjoyed your intimate letter from the Dolomites. It gave me a great deal of pain – which is I've no doubt the first stage of intimacy – no friends, no heart, only an indifferent head. Never mind: I enjoyed your abuse very much [...]
But I will not go on else I should write you a really intimate letter, and then you would dislike me, more, even more, than you do.”
― Virginia Woolf

“I like her being honourable, and she is it; a perfect lady, with all the dash and courage of the aristocracy, and less of its childishness than I expected. She is like an over ripe grape in features, moustached, pouting, will be a little heavy; meanwhile, she strides on fine legs, in a well cut skirt, and though embarrassing at breakfast, has a manly good sense and simplicity about her which both L. and I find satisfactory. Oh yes, I like her; could tack her on to my equipage for all time; and suppose if life allowed, this might be a friendship of a sort.”
― Virginia Woolf

“You angel, you have written. [...]
Please, in all this muddle of life, continue to be a bright and constant star. Just a few things remain as beacons: poetry, and you, and solitude. You see that I am extremely sentimental. Had you suspected that?”
― Vita Sackville-West

“You see it is so easy for you sitting in Tavistock Square to look inward; but I find it very difficult to look inward when I am also looking at the coast of Sinai; and very difficult to look at the coast of Sinai when I am also looking inward and finding the image of Virginia everywhere.”
― Vita Sackville-West

“Vita comes to lunch tomorrow, which will be a great amusement and pleasure. I am amused at my relations with her: left so ardent in January – and now what? Also I like her presence and her beauty. Am I in love with her? But what is love? Her being 'in love' with me, excites and flatters; and interests. What is this 'love'?”
― Virginia Woolf

“[Virginia] is an exquisite companion, and I love her dearly. She has to stay in bed till luncheon, as she is still far from well, and she has lots of lessons to do. Leonard is coming on Saturday [...]
Please don't think that
a) I shall fall in love with Virginia
b) Virginia will fall in love with me
c) Leonard """"""
d) I shall fall """ Leonard
Because it is not so [...]”
― Vita Sackville-West

“Somehow it's dull and damp. I have been dull; I have missed you. I do miss you. I shall miss you. And if you don't believe it, you're a long-eared owl and ass. Lovely phrases?”
― Virginia Woolf

“Yes, I miss you, I miss you. I dare not expatiate, because you will say I am not stark, and cannot feel the things dumb people feel. You know that is rather rotten rot, my dear Vita. After all, what is a lovely phrase? One that has mopped up as much Truth as it can hold.”
― Virginia Woolf

“Do you know it was four weeks yesterday that you went? Yes, I often think of you, instead of my novel; I want to take you over the water meadows in the summer on foot, I have thought of many million things to tell you. Devil that you are, to vanish to Persia and leave me here! [...] And, dearest Vita, we are having two water-closets made, one paid for by Mrs Dalloway, the other by The Common Reader: both dedicated to you.”
― Virginia Woolf

“This is how you must imagine your letters arriving, and me carrying them off to read in peace, and saying 'oh darling Virginia', and smiling to myself, and reading them all over again. Whereas mine just come with the postman.”
― Vita Sackville-West

“No, I am in no muddles [...] Virginia – not a muddle exactly; she is a busy and sensible woman. But she does love me, and I did sleep with her at Rodmell. That does not constitute a muddle though.”
― Vita Sackville-West

“All these ancestors and centuries, and silver and gold, have bred a perfect body. She is stag like, or race horse like, save for the face, which pouts, and has no very sharp brain. But as a body hers is perfection. So many rare and curious objects hit one's brain like pellets which perhaps unfold later. But it's the breeding of Vita's that I took away with me as an impression, carrying her and Knole in my eye [...]”
― Virginia Woolf

“Clive with his tongue well-loosened, imagine my horror when he suddenly said, 'I wonder if I dare ask Vita a very indiscreet question?' and I, being innocent and off my guard, said yes he might, and he came out with 'Have you ever gone to bed with Virginia?' but I think my 'NEVER!' convinced him and everybody else of the truth. This will show you what the conversation was like!”
― Vita Sackville-West

“I find life altogether intoxicating, – its pain no less than its pleasure, – in which Virginia plays no mean part.”
― Vita Sackville-West

“What I should really like to do would be to take you to some absurdly romantic place, ― vain dream, alas! What with Leonard and the Press ― Besides, by romantic I mean Persia or China, not Tintagel or Kergarnec. Oh what fun it would be, and Virginia's eyes would grow rounder and rounder, and presently it would all flow like water from a Sparklets siphon, turned into beautiful bubbles.”
― Vita Sackville-West

“Like a little warm coal in my heart burns your saying that you miss me. I miss you oh so much. How much, you'll never believe or know. At every moment of the day. It is painful but also rather pleasant, if you know what I mean. I mean, that it is good to have so keen and persistent a feeling about somebody.”
― Vita Sackville-West

“Clive follows me all over the place. Have I been to bed with Virginia yet? If not, am I likely to do so in the near future? If not, will I please give it my attention? As it is high time Virginia fell in love.”
― Vita Sackville-West

“Vita has been twice. She is doomed to go to Persia; and I mind the thought so much (thinking to lose sight of her for five years) that I conclude I am genuinely fond of her.”
― Virginia Woolf

“I am sitting up in bed: I am very very charming; and Vita is a dear old rough coated sheep dog: or alternatively, hung with grapes, pink with pearls, lustrous, candle lit, in the door of a Sevenoaks draper [...] Ah, but I like being with Vita.”
― Virginia Woolf

“I don't want to get landed in an affair which might get beyond my control before I knew where I was.
[...] But darling, Virginia is not the sort of person one thinks of in that way. There is something incongruous and almost indecent in the idea. I have gone to bed with her (twice), but that's all. Now you know all about it, and I hope I haven't shocked you [...]”
― Vita Sackville-West

“I look on my friendship with her as a treasure and a privilege. I shan't ever fall in love with her, padlock, but I am absolutely devoted to her and if she died I should mind quite, quite dreadfully. Or went mad again.”
― Vita Sackville-West

“her real claim to consideration is, if I may be so coarse, her legs. Oh they are exquisite – running like slender pillars up into her trunk, which is that of a breastless cuirassier (yet she has 2 children) but all about her is virginal, savage, patrician [...]”
― Virginia Woolf

“I think she is one of the most mentally exciting people I know. She hates the wishy-washiness of Bloomsbury young men. We have made friends by leaps and bounds, in these two days. I love her, but couldn't fall 'in love' with her, so don't be nervous!”
― Vita Sackville-West

“But it is a great comfort to think of you when I'm not well – I wonder why. Still nicer – better to see you. So I hope for Tuesday.”
― Virginia Woolf

“I miss you horribly, and apart from that am permanently infuriated by the thought of what you could make of this country if only you could be got here. You see, you ought to.”
― Vita Sackville-West

“And, – mark, – I do care so satisfactorily for the few people that matter to me. (For Virginia? Oh dear me YES, for Virginia.)”
― Vita Sackville-West