229"Oh my beloved creature, how little use I am in the world! Selfish, vain, egoistical, and incompetent. Will you think out a training to make me less selfish? When I hear of your worries and wishes—I don’t know if a pen is as fatal to you as it is to me—I feel positively fraudulent—like one who gets sympathy on false pretenses. I pass from hot to cold in an instant, without any reason; I am puzzled by parts of my character. And I haven’t said anything very much, or given you any notion of the terrific high waves, and the infernal deep gulfs, on which I mount and toss; these hideous morbid fancies of mine. And I’m half ashamed, now I try to write it, to see what pigmy egotisms are at the root of it, with me anyhow." - Virginia Woolf, from a letter to Vita Sackville-West dated 20 April 1927