Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends.

The line contrasts three kinds of solace or guidance: religious confession (“priests”), aesthetic consolation (“poetry”), and the intimate, everyday support of companionship (“my friends”). Read this way, it affirms friendship as Woolf’s preferred refuge—an alternative to institutional authority or impersonal art when confronting distress, uncertainty, or the need for understanding. It also implies a modern, secular ethic: meaning and repair are found in chosen human relationships rather than in formal doctrine. The phrasing suggests a private credo, valuing conversation, empathy, and shared experience as the most reliable form of counsel and emotional sustenance.