“Now is life very solid or shifting? I am haunted by the two contradictions. This has gone on for ever; will last for ever; goes down to the bottom of the world–this moment I stand on. Also it is transitory, flying, diaphanous. I shall pass like a cloud on the waves. Perhaps it may be that though we change, one flying after another, so quick, so quick, yet we are somehow successive and continuous we human beings, and show the light through. But what is the light? I am impressed by the transitoriness of human life to such an extent that I am often saying a farewell–after dining with Roger for instance; or reckoning how many more times I shall see Nessa.”
–from A Writer’s Diary by Virginia Woolf
notes:
Roger–Roger Frye–famous art critic and close friend of VW, who died before VW
Nessa–Vanessa, Virginia’s painter-illustrator-sister, who outlived her