Joining, Growing, Dismembering, Steeping

‘All good writing is honest in the sense that it says what the writer means; but Emerson did not see that one can write with phrases as well as with words. His sentences are made up of hard fragments each of which has been matched separately with the vision in his head. It is far rarer to find sentences which, lacking emphasis because the joins are perfect and words common, yet grow together so that you cannot dismember them, and are steeped in meaning and suggestion.’

— Virginia Woolf, ‘Emerson’s Journals’