The Hours (2002)

Virginia Woolf : You cannot find peace by avoiding life, Leonard.

[last lines]

Virginia Woolf : [Narrating the letter] 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.

[first lines]

Virginia Woolf : [Narrating the letter] Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel I can't go through another one of these terrible times and I shant recover this time. I begin to hear voices and can't concentrate. So, I am 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 am 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

Virginia Woolf : Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more. It's contrast.

Leonard Woolf : And who will die? Tell me.

Virginia Woolf : The poet will die. The visionary.

Virginia Woolf : I'm dying in this town.

Leonard Woolf : If you were thinking clearly, Virginia, you would recall it was London that brought you low.

Virginia Woolf : If I were thinking clearly? If I were thinking clearly?

Leonard Woolf : We brought you to Richmond to give you peace.

Virginia Woolf : If I were thinking clearly, Leonard, I would tell you that I wrestle alone in the dark, in the deep dark, and that only I can know. Only I can understand my condition. You live with the threat, you tell me you live with the threat of my extinction. Leonard, I live with it too.

Virginia Woolf : A woman's whole life in a single day. Just one day. And in that day her whole life.

Virginia Woolf : Did it matter, then, she asked herself, walking toward Bond Street. Did it matter 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? It is possible to die. It is possible to die.

[in 1921]

Virginia Woolf : [writing in her book] Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.

[in 1951]

Laura Brown : [reading in bed] Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.

[in 2001]

Clarissa Vaughan : Sally, I think I'll buy the flowers myself.

[waking up]

Sally Lester : What? What flowers?

[realizing]

Sally Lester : Oh, shit! I forgot!

Angelica Bell : What happens when we die?

Virginia Woolf : What happens?

[pause]

Virginia Woolf : We return to the place that we came from.

Angelica Bell : I don't remember where I came from.

Virginia Woolf : Nor do I.

Virginia Woolf : This is my right; it is the right of every human being. I choose not the suffocating anesthetic of the suburbs, but the violent jolt of the Capital, that is my choice. The meanest patient, yes, even the very lowest is allowed some say in the matter of her own prescription. Thereby she defines her humanity. I wish, for your sake, Leonard, I could be happy in this quietness.

[pause]

Virginia Woolf : But if it is a choice between Richmond and death, I choose death.

Virginia Woolf : I am saying, Vanessa, that even crazy people like to be asked.

Virginia Woolf : I am attended by doctors. Everywhere. I am attended by doctors who inform me of my own interests.

Leonard Woolf : If I didn't know you better I'd call this ingratitude.

Virginia Woolf : I am ungrateful? You call ME ungrateful? My life has been stolen from me. I'm living in a town I have no wish to live in... I'm living a life I have no wish to live... How did this happen?

Virginia Woolf : I was going to kill my heroine. But I've changed my mind. I fear I may have to kill someone else, instead.

Virginia Woolf : Do you think I may one day escape?

Vanessa Bell : One day.

Virginia Woolf : It's on this day. This day of all days. Her fate becomes clear to her.

Vanessa Bell : Virginia.

Virginia Woolf : Leonard thinks it's the end of civilization: People who are invited at 4 and arrive at 2:30.

Vanessa Bell : Oh God.

Virginia Woolf : Barbarians.

Virginia Woolf : Leonard, I believe I may have a first sentence.

Leonard Woolf : Work, then.

Angelica Bell : What were you thinking about?

Virginia Woolf : I was going to kill my heroine. But I've changed my mind.