"But still, had it not been for this desolation, laying her whole nature bare, and bidding it put..."

“But still, had it not been for this desolation, laying her whole nature bare, and bidding it put forth its powers in entire loneliness, could she ever have shown herself as noble and as true as she was?”

- Virginia Woolf, “Reminiscences, Chapter Two”, Moments of Being (Harcourt, Inc., 1985) 44.