How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
The reason perhaps why we know so little of Shakespeare [...] is that his grudges and spites and antipathies are hidden from us [...] If ever a mind was incandescent, unimpeded, I thought, turning again to the bookcase, it was Shakespeare's mind. (3.17)
There's a metaphor here, but it's a little tricky. Woolf is saying (1) that Shakespeare's mind is on fire and (2) his desire to complain about his life or rag on others has been burned out. Without that need to complain all the time, he's able to just be a genius. (Is that all it takes?)
Quote #5
For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice. (4.21)
Think of that the next time you sit down to write a paper. This is an important point in A Room of One's Own, that writers never write alone, but rather they stand on the shoulders of everyone who came before. This comes up especially at the very end of the book.
Quote #6
[Woman's] sensibility had been educated for centuries by the influences of the common sitting room. People's feelings were impressed on her; personal relations were always before her eyes. Therefore, when the middle-class woman took to writing, she naturally wrote novels. (4.22)
What conditions are necessary to write, say, Robocop? What might you write in a solitary room instead of the living room? And why is Woolf so down on interpersonal relations?