The Hours (2002) - Quotes

Questioning the Purpose of the Gathering

Richard: Who is this party for?

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Celebrating a Friend's Achievement at a Party

Clarissa: I'm having a party. My friend Richard has won the Carruthers.

Florist: Well that's just terrific! If I knew what it was.

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Final Words of Despair and Reflection

Richard Brown: *Richard's last words, quoting Virginia's suicide note, before he jumps out the window

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Happiness Shared Between Two People

Richard Brown: I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.

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A Struggle Between Love and Letting Go

Richard Brown: I've stayed alive for you. But now you have to let me go.

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Unexpected Combination of Medications

Richard Brown: I had this fantastic notion. I took the Xanax and the Ritalin together. It had never occurred to me!

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Confronting Selfishness in Mortality

Richard Brown: Just wait till I die. Then you'll have to think of yourself. How are you going to like that?

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Contemplating Death and Its Impact

Richard Brown: Would you be angry if I died?

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The Struggle of Aspiration and Failure

Richard Brown: 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 fucking pride and stupidity.

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The Silence Behind Social Gatherings

Richard Brown: Oh, Mrs. Dalloway... Always giving parties to cover the silence.

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The Beginning of Happiness

Clarissa Vaughan: I remember one morning getting up at dawn, there was such a sense of possibility. You know, that feeling? And I remember thinking to myself this is the beginning of happiness. This is where it starts. And of course there will always be more. It never occurred to wasn't the beginning. It was happiness. It was the moment. Right then.

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The Contrast of Presence and Absence

Clarissa Vaughan: When I'm with him I feel... Yes, I am living. And when I'm not with him... Yes, everything does seem sort of silly.

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Questioning the Nature of Wrongness

Clarissa Vaughan: Why is everything wrong?

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Living for Each Other's Survival

Clarissa Vaughan: That is what we do. That is what people do. They stay alive for each other.

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Choosing Life Amidst Despair and Regret

Laura Brown: There are times when you don't belong and you think you're going to kill yourself. Once I went to a hotel. Later that night I made a plan. The plan was I would leave my family when my second child was born. And that's what I did. I got up one morning, made breakfast, went to the bus stop, got on a bus. I'd left a note. I got a job in a library in Canada. It would be wonderful to say you regretted it. It would be easy. But what does it mean? What does it mean to regret when you have no choice? It's what you can bear. There it is. No-one's going to forgive me. It was death. I chose life.

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Struggles with Worthiness and Survival

Laura Brown: Obviously, you feel unworthy. Gives you feelings of unworthiness. You survive and they don't.

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A Cake for Daddy's Birthday

Laura Brown: I'm gonna make a cake. That's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna make the cake for daddy's birthday.

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Reflections on Life and Existence

Virginia Woolf: *closing narration

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Facing Life and Embracing Time

Virginia Woolf: 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.

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Confronting Life for True Peace

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

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The Struggle for Autonomy and Existence

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 own condition. You live with the threat, you tell me you live with the threat of my extinction. Leonard, I live with it too. 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. But if it is a choice between Richmond and death, I choose death.

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Struggles of a Stolen Life

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?

Isolation Amidst Constant Attention

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

Contemplating the Nature of Existence and Death

Virginia Woolf: Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards 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.

The Value of Inclusion in Conversation

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

The Excitement of a London Trip

Virginia Woolf: I can't think of anything more exhilarating than a trip to London.

A Day of Clarity and Fate

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

A Lifetime Captured in One Day

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

Finding Inspiration for a First Sentence

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

A Final Message of Love and Farewell

Virginia Woolf: * Virginia's suicide letter to Leonard

Struggles of Love and Mental Turmoil

Virginia Woolf: 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.