The Hours tells the story of three women: Virginia Woolf, beginning to write Mrs. Dalloway as she recuperates in a London suburb with her husband in 1923; Clarissa Vaughan, beloved friend of an acclaimed poet dying from AIDS, who in modern-day New York is planning a party in his honor; and... read more
It's strange how our worlds collide. It's frustrating how we figure out everyday that with all we've learned; we're still ignorant. We could even be ignorant of who we are; who we are now, who we were yesterday and who we'd be. The now, the hours, and the hours after that....
'The Hours'... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)
“You want her to come inside your head and feel the worries and sorrows, the nameless fear”
“I don't know if I can take this. You know. The party and the ceremony, and then the hour after that, and the hour after that.”Richard
“I am trivial. Endlessly trivial.”Mrs. Dalloway
“She doesn't want, not at all, to be the strange woman, the pathetic creature, full of quirks and rages, solitary, sulking, tolerated but not loved.”Laura Brown
“There is still that singular perfection, and it's perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more. Now she knows: that was the moment, right then. There has been no other.”Clarissa Vaughan (thought)
“Beauty is a whore, I like money better Still, she loves the world for being rude and indestructible, and she knows other people must love it too, poor as well as rich, through no one speaks specifically of the reasons. Why else do we struggle to go on living, no matter how compromised, no matter how harmed?Still, we want desperately to liveYou measure people first by their kindness and their capacity for devotion You get tired, sometimes, of wit and intellect; everybody’s little display of genius.”
There’s just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we’ve ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more.Highlighted by 55 Kindle customers
These days, Clarissa believes, you measure people first by their kindness and their capacity for devotion. You get tired, sometimes, of wit and intellect; everybody’s little display of genius.Highlighted by 46 Kindle customers
“But there are still the hours, aren’t there? One and then another, and you get through that one and then, my god, there’s another. I’m so sick.”Highlighted by 40 Kindle customers
There is still that singular perfection, and it’s perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more. Now she knows: That was the moment, right then. There has been no other.Highlighted by 39 Kindle customers
Still, she loves the world for being rude and indestructible, and she knows other people must love it too, poor as well as rich, though no one speaks specifically of the reasons. Why else do we struggle to go on living, no matter how compromised, no matter how harmed?Highlighted by 32 Kindle customers
Venture too far for love, she tells herself, and you renounce citizenship in the country you’ve made for yourself. You end up just sailing from port to port.Highlighted by 29 Kindle customers
She can feel it inside her, an all but indescribable second self, or rather a parallel, purer self. If she were religious, she would call it the soul. It is more than the sum of her intellect and her emotions, more than the sum of her experiences, though it runs like veins of brilliant metal through all three. It is an inner faculty that recognizes the animating mysteries of the world because it is made of the same substance, and when she is very fortunate she is able to write directly through that faculty.Highlighted by 29 Kindle customers
Clarissa, she thinks, is not the bride of death after all. Clarissa is the bed in which the bride is laid.Highlighted by 22 Kindle customers
She thinks of how much more space a being occupies in life than it does in death; how much illusion of size is contained in gestures and movements, in breathing. Dead, we are revealed in our true dimensions, and they are surprisingly modest.Highlighted by 22 Kindle customers
One always has a better book in one’s mind than one can manage to get onto paper.Highlighted by 20 Kindle customers
Prologue
Mrs. Dalloway
Mrs. Woolf
Mrs. Brown
Mrs. Dalloway
Mrs. Woolf
Mrs. Brown
Mrs. Woolf
Mrs. Dalloway
Mrs. Brown
Mrs. Woolf
Mrs. Dalloway
Mrs. Brown
Mrs. Woolf
Mrs. Dalloway
Mrs. Woolf
Mrs. Dalloway
Mrs. Brown
Mrs. Dalloway
Mrs. Brown
Mrs. Woolf
Mrs. Brown
Mrs. Dalloway
Preceded by American Pastoral, and followed by Interpreter of Maladies.
Preceded by Another World, and followed by Veronika Decides to Die.
We’re hiding the errata, books influenced by this book and books cited by this book sections. If you would like to add content to them, you must first make them visible.