The Hours quotes

View Quote Kitty: Oh, you're reading a book?
Laura: Yeah.
Kitty: What's this one about?
Laura: Oh, it's about this woman who's incredibly — well, she's a hostess and she's incredibly confident and she's going to give a party. And maybe because she's confident, everyone thinks she's fine... but she isn't.

View Quote Laura: [We're] baking the cake to show him that we love him.
Richie: Otherwise he won't know we love him?
Laura: That's right.

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 Richard: We want everything, don't we?
Clarissa: I suppose we do.

View Quote Richard: Who is this party for?
Clarissa: What are you asking, what are you trying to say?
Richard: I'm not trying to say anything. I think I'm staying alive just to satisfy you.

View Quote Vanessa: Virginia.
Virginia: Leonard thinks it's the end of civilization: People who are invited at 4 and arrive at 2:30.
Vanessa: Oh God.
Virginia: Barbarians.

View Quote Virginia: You return to what?
Vanessa: Tonight. Oh, just some insufferable dinner not even you could envy, Virginia.
Virginia: But I do.

View Quote A woman's whole life in a single day. Just one day. And in that day her whole life.

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 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 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.

View Quote I am saying, Vanessa, that even crazy people like to be asked.

View Quote 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?

View Quote I can't think of anything more exhilarating than a trip to London.

View Quote I don't think two people could have been happier than we've been.