Mrs. Dalloway

forgot which, for his letters were awfully dull; it was his sayings one
remembered; his eyes, his pocket-knife, his smile, his grumpiness and,
when millions of things had utterly vanished--how strange it was!--a
few sayings like this about cabbages.

She stiffened a little on the kerb, waiting for Durtnall’s van to
pass. A charming woman, Scrope Purvis thought her (knowing her as one
does know people who live next door to one in Westminster); a touch of
the bird about her, of the jay, blue-green, light, vivacious, though
she was over fifty, and grown very white since her illness. There she
perched, never seeing him, waiting to cross, very upright.

For having lived in Westminster--how many years now? over twenty,--one
feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa
was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable
pause; a suspense (but that might be her heart, affected, they said,
by influenza) before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First
a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles
dissolved in the air. Such fools we are, she thought, crossing Victoria
Street. For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so,