The Hours quotes

View Quote I wanted to be a writer, that's all. I wanted to write about it all. Everything that happens in a moment. The way the flowers looked when you carried them in your arms. This towel, how it smells, how it feels, this thread. All our feelings, yours and mine. The history of it, who we once were. Everything in the world. Everything all mixed up, like it's all mixed up now. And I failed. I failed. No matter what you start with it ends up being so much less. Sheer ****ing pride and stupidity.

View Quote Dear Leonard. To look life in the face. Always to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it. To love it for what it is, and then, to put it away. Leonard. Always the years between us. Always the years. Always the love. Always the hours.

View Quote Kitty: All my life I could do everything. I could do anything, really. Except the one thing I wanted.

View Quote Dearest, I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of these terrible times again and I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices and can't concentrate. So I'm doing what seems to be the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I know that I'm spoiling your life and without me you could work, and you will, I know. You see, I can't even write this properly. What I want to say is that I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me. And incredibly good. Everything is gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been. Virginia's letter to Leonard

View Quote Richard: I don't think I can make it to the party, Clarissa.
Clarissa: You don't have to go to the party, you don't have to go to the ceremony, you don't have to do anything you don't want to do. You can do as you like.
Richard: But I still have to face the hours, don't I? I mean, the hours after the party, and the hours after that...
Clarissa: You do have good days still. You know you do.
Richard: Not really. I mean, it's kind of you to say so, but it's not really true.

View Quote Julia: They're all here, aren't they? All the ghosts... All the ghosts are assembling for the party!

View Quote Clarissa: He gives me that look.
Julia: What look?
Clarissa: To say: Your life is trivial. You are so trivial.

View Quote Clarissa: He came out behind me. He put his hand on my shoulder... 'Good morning, Mrs. Dalloway.' [pause] From then on I've been stuck.
Louis: Stuck?
Clarissa: Yep. With the name, I mean.

View Quote Vanessa: Your aunt is a very lucky woman, Angelica. She has two lives. She has the life she is leading and also the books she is writing.

View Quote Dan: The thought of this life, that's what kept me going. I had an idea of our happiness.

View Quote Louis: The day I left him I got on a train and made my way across Europe. I felt free for the first time in years.

View Quote Angelica: What happens when we die?
Virginia: What happens? [pause] We return to the place that we came from.
Angelica: I don't remember where I came from.
Virginia: Nor do I.

View Quote Angelica: What were you thinking about?
Virginia: I was going to kill my heroine. But I've changed my mind. [pause] I fear I may have to kill someone else instead.

View Quote Sally: Why do I always have to sit next to the exes? Is this some kind of a hint, sweetheart? And anyway, shouldn't the exes have a table of their own where they can all ex together in ex-quisite agony?

View Quote Julia: So that's the monster.