The Hours Study Guide

The Hours

The Hours by Michael Cunningham

The Hours, a novel, follows a day in the life of three women whose lives are affected by the Virginia Woolf novel Mrs. Dalloway. The first is Woolf herself, dealing with her depression. Another is a 1940s housewife trying to plan her husband's birthday party, and the last is a contemporary lesbian trying to plan a celebration for a friend dying of AIDS. Each has aspects of their life which mirror the Mrs. Dalloway of the text, and the book itself invokes the style and themes of Woolf's classic novel.

The Hours Quotes

Table of Contents
  • I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.
    • quote from Virginia Woolf's suicide note to Leonard Woolf.
    • p7, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition.
  • What a thrill, what a shock, to be alive on a morning in June, prosperous, almost scandalously privileged, with a simple errand to run.
    • Clarissa reflecting on the day as she walks to the flower shop.
    • p10, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition.
  • Why doesn't she feel more somber about Richard's perversely simultaneous good fortune ("an anguished, prophetic voice in American letters") and his decline ("You have no T-cells at all, none that we can detect")? What is wrong with her? She loves Richard, she thinks of him constantly, but she perhaps loves the day slightly more.
    • Clarissa thinking about Richard.
    • p11, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition.
  • The woman's head quickly withdraws, the door to the trailer closes again, but she leaves behind her an unmistakable sense of watchful remonstrance, as if an angel had briefly touched the surface of the world with one sandaled foot, asked if there was any trouble and, being told all was well, had resumed her place in the ether with skeptical gravity, having reminded the children of earth that they are just barely trusted to manage their own business, and that further carelessness will not go unremarked.
    • Clarissa spotting a movie star sticking her head outside her trailer door in response to a film crew's noisiness.
    • p27, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition.
  • He makes her think sometimes of a mouse singing amorous ballads under the window of a giantess.
    • Laura reflecting on her son's transparent love for her.
    • p44, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition.
  • ...the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June.
    • Laura remembering a quote from Woolf's 'Mrs.Dalloway.'
    • p48, 1999 Fourth Estate paperback edition.
  • It had seemed like the beginning of happiness, and Clarissa is still sometimes shocked, more than thirty years later, to realize that it was happiness; that the entire experience lay in a kiss and a walk, the anticipation of dinner and a book...What lives undimmed in Clarissa's mind more than three decades later is a kiss at dusk on a patch of dead grass, and a walk around a pond as mosquitoes droned in the darkening air. There is still that singular perfection, and it's perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more. Now she knows: That was the moment, right then. There has been no other.
    • Clarissa reflecting on her past.
    • p98, 1999 paperback edition.
  • ...Virginia lingers another moment beside the dead bird in its circle of roses. It could be a kind of hat. It could be the missing link between millinery and death.
    • Virginia in the garden.
    • p121, 1999 paperback edition.
  • We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep. It's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out windows, or drown themselves, or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us are slowly devoured by some disease, or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself. There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds&expectations, to burst open&give us everything we've ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) know these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning, we hope, more than anything for more. Heaven only knows why we love it so.
    • Clarissa reflecting at the end of the day.
    • p225-226, 1999 paperback edition.

    You'll need to sign up to view the entire study guide.

    Sign Up Now, It's FREE
    Source: WikiQuote, released under the Creative Commons Attributions/Share-Alike License
    Filter Your Search Results: