A Room of One's Own (Annotated)

Perhaps the androgynous mind is less apt to make these distinctions than the single-sexed mind. He meant, perhaps, that the androgynous mind is resonant and porous; that it transmits emotion without impediment; that it is naturally creative, incandescent and undivided

I need not say that what I am about to describe has no existence; Oxbridge is an invention; so is Fernham;

Fiction here is likely to contain more truth than fact. Therefore I propose, making use of all the liberties and licences of a novelist, to tell you the story of the two days that preceded my coming here

I had slipped unthinkingly into praise of my own sex. “Highly developed”—“infinitely intricate”—such are undeniably terms of praise, and to praise one’s own sex is always suspect, often silly

Fiction here is likely to contain more truth than fact. Therefore I propose, making use of all the liberties and licences of a novelist, to tell you the story of the two days that preceded my coming here

the androgynous mind is resonant and porous; that it transmits emotion without impediment; that it is naturally creative, incandescent and undivided.

Coleridge perhaps meant this when he said that a great mind is androgynous. It is when this fusion takes place that the mind is fully fertilised and uses all its faculties. Perhaps a mind that is purely masculine cannot create, any more than a mind that is purely feminine, I thought. But it would be well to test what one meant by man-womanly, and conversely by woman-manly, by pausing and looking at a book or two.

But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh.

I find myself saying briefly and prosaically that it is much more important to be oneself than anything els

Intellectual freedom depends upon material things. Poetry depends upon intellectual freedom.