Character: Mrs. Ramsey

It's amazing how a man of his intellect can be so dependent on other people's praise?

Charles Tansley - that's what's unbearable - until he somehow distorts, doesn't bring you down, doesn't belittle you, doesn't piss you off with this nasty manner of knocking the spirit out of everything - he won't stop. And in the art gallery he will ask how you like his tie.

What is the meaning of life? That's all. A simple question; a question that is increasingly beset you over the years. And the great revelation never comes. Great revelation, perhaps, may not come. It sends itself instead of the little everyday miracles, enlightenment, flare of matches in the dark.

Pushed her instinct - the instinct which draws the swallows to the South, the artichokes for the sun, unmistakably it has turned to people, helped twist in the soul of their nest.

There is no such betrayal, such baseness, which the world is unable to, she was convinced. Happiness is not forever, she was convinced.