quote · Legacy record
…the art of writing has for backbone some fierce attachment to an idea…. It is on the back of an idea, something believed in with conviction or seen with precision and thus compelling words to a shape….You have not finished with it because you have read it, any more than friendship is ended because it is time to part. Life wells up and alters and adds. Even things in a book-case change if they are alive; we find ourselves wanting to meet them again; we find them altered. So we look back upon essay after essay by Mr. Beerbohm, knowing that, come September or May, we shall sit down with them and talk.
…the art of writing has for backbone some fierce attachment to an idea…. It is on the back of an idea, something believed in with conviction or seen with precision and thus compelling words to a shape….You have not finished with it because you have read it, any more than friendship is ended because it is time to part. Life wells up and alters and adds. Even things in a book-case change if they are alive; we find ourselves wanting to meet them again; we find them altered. So we look back upon essay after essay by Mr. Beerbohm, knowing that, come September or May, we shall sit down with them and talk.
Approximate author period: c. 1911 AD · modern
Meaning not yet available
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- Author or tradition
- Virginia Woolf
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin. - Historical period
- Approximate author period: c. 1911 AD · modern
Approximate author-period anchor from life dates 1882 to 1941; Wikidata Q40909, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40909 (accessed 2026-10-08). Not a quotation composition date.
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Supplied reference C; CSV row 64005; supplied attribution, independently unverified
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