For when you cut off the head of a talk it behaves like a hen that has been decapitated. It runs round in a circle till it drops dead – so people say who have killed hens. And that must be the course, or circle, of this decapitated talk.
-- Virginia Woolf

Importance: This quotation is Woolf's warning to listeners that her talk will not operate with the structure one would anticipate. Instead, she explains that her essay will be circular and rambling. This setup allows Woolf to introduce listeners and readers to her theory of words early on, as she structures her talk according to the same portrait she paints of words – multifaceted, shifting, and difficult to pin down.

How does he do it? Not with words; words would at once bring into being shrubberies and billiard tables, men and women, the moon rising and the long splash of the summer sea – all good...
-- Virginia Woolf