11
I keep thinking it just might be me, but I swear there was some interest glimmering right there in the depths of your eyes. But that’s as far as I can see, as an appearance is only skin deep.
Vanessa Bell / Portrait of Virginia Woolf
I remember one evening, as we were jumping about naked, she and I, in the bathroom, she suddenly asked me which I liked best, my father or mother. Such a question seemed to me rather terrible, surely one ought not to ask it. However, being asked, one had to reply. And I found I had little doubt as to my answer. “Mother,” I said. She went on to explain why she, on the whole, preferred father. I don’t think, however, her preferences were quite as sure and simple as mine. She’d considered both critically, and had more or less analysed her feelings for them which I, at any rate consciously, had never attempted. This seemed to begin an age of much freer speech between us. If one could criticise one’s parents, what or whom one could not criticise? Dimly, some freedom of thought and speech seemed born, created by her question.
(via awritersruminations)
