The Waves

by Virginia Woolf

She has kissed me. All is shattered.”

Let me pull myself out of these waters. But they heap themselves on me; they sweep me between their great shoulders; I am turned; I am tumbled; I am stretched, among these long lights, these long waves, these endless paths, with people pursuing, pursuing.”

Among the tortures and devastations of life is this then—our friends are not able to finish their stories.”

I do not know myself sometimes, or how to measure and name and count out the grains that make me what I am.

“How strange to feel the line that is spun from us lengthening its fine filament across the misty spaces of the intervening world.

Draughts of oblivion shall quench my agitation.

I am the foam that sweeps and fills the uttermost rims of the rocks with whiteness; I am also a girl, here in this room.”

We are become part of that unfeeling universe that sleeps when we are at our quickest and burns red when we lie asleep.

“It is strange that we who are capable of so much suffering, should inflict so much suffering.