Virginia Woolfe, On Writing

It's the birthday of Virginia Woolf, and Garrison Keillor shared this in today's Writer's Almanac (thanks KED!):

"...And in her long essay about women and literature, A Room of One's Own (1929), she [Virginia Woolfe] wrote: 'So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery, and the sacrifice of wealth and chastity, which used to be said to be the greatest of human disasters, a mere flea-bite in comparison.' "

I love this quote! It says what I wish every middle-school girl in the world was taught - each and every day in school. To think her own thoughts, write her own truth. That is revolutionary.