"Mrs. Dalloway" Quotes

Mrs. Dalloway is a famous stream of consciousness novel by Virginia Woolf. Here are a few key quotes:

Quotes

• "She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on... far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day."
• "Did it matter then... that she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely?"
• "But often now this body she wore... this body, with all its capacities, seemed nothing—nothing at all."
• "... at any moment the brute would be stirring, this hatred, which, especially since her illness, had power to make her feel scraped, hurt in her spine; gave her physical pain, and made all pleasure in beauty, in friendship, in being well, in being loved... quiver, and bend as if indeed there were a monster grubbing at the roots."
• "... how she loved the grey-whit moths spinning in and out, over the cherry pie, over the evening primroses!"
• "She belonged to a different age, but being so entire, so complete, would always stand up on the horizon, stone-white, eminent, like a lighthouse marking some past stage on this adventurous, long, long voyage, this interminable—this interminable life."
• "The word 'time' split its husk; poured its riches over him; and from his lips fell like shells, like shavings from a plane, without his making them, hard, white, imperishable words, and flew to attach themselves to their places in an ode to Time; an immortal ode to Time."
• "... what did it mean to her, this thing she called life? Oh, it was very queer."
• "A mouse had squeaked, or a curtain rustled. Those were the voices of the dead."
• "For this is the truth about our soul... our self, who fish-like inhabits deep seas and plies among obscurities threading her way between the boles of giant weeds, over sun-flickered spaces and on and on into gloom, cold, deep, inscrutable."
• "Lolloping on the waves and braiding her tresses she seemed, having that gift still; to be; to exist; to sum it all up in the moment as she passed... But age had brushed her; even as a mermaid might behold in her glass the setting sun on some very clear evening over the waves."
• "Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching the center which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was alone. There was an embrace in death."