Jackie’s Reviews > To the Lighthouse > Status Update

“It was her instinct to go, an instinct like the swallows for the south, the artichokes for the sun, turning her infallibly to the human race, making her nest in its heart. And this, like all instincts, was a little distressing to people who did not share it”

“There was some quality in her which he did not much like. It was perhaps her masterfulness, her positiveness, something matter-of-fact in her. She was so direct.”

“For there are moments when one can neither think nor feel. And if one can neither think nor feel, she thought, where is one?“

Beauty had this penalty—it came too readily, came too completely. It stilled life—froze it. One forgot the little agitations; the flush, the pallor, some queer distortion, some light or shadow, which made the face unrecognisable for a moment and yet added a quality one saw for ever after. It was simpler to smooth that all out under the cover of beauty.

“ The water chuckled“

All that in idea seemed simple became in practice immediately complex; as the waves shaped themselves symmetrically from the cliff top, but to the swimmer among them are divided by steep gulfs, and foaming crests. Still the risk must be run; the mark made.

He was like a lion seeking whom he could devour

So I keep stepping on these landmines of deaths the further I walk into this chapter.

“sun-lanced waters”

“Crepuscular” is, like, the grossest-sounding word. But it means something quite beautiful.