Orlando: A Biography

By the truth we are undone. Life is a dream.

He — for there could be no doubt of his sex

Of wall or substance there was none. All was phantom. All was still. All was lit as for the coming of a dead Queen.

So she was now darkened, stilled, and become, with the addition of this Orlando, what is called, rightly or wrongly, a single self, a real self.

Fame! she repeated. A poet — a charlatan; both every morning as regularly as the post comes in.

Thirty-six; in a motor-car; a woman. Yes, but a million other things as well.

For she had a great variety of selves to call upon, far more than we have been able to find room for, since a biography is considered complete if it merely accounts for six or seven selves, whereas a person may well have as many thousand.

The true length of a person’s life, whatever the “Dictionary of National Biography” may say, is always a matter of dispute.

Orlando leapt as if she had been violently struck on the head. Ten times she was struck. In fact it was ten o’clock in the morning. It was the eleventh of October. It was 1928. It was the present moment.

Hail, happiness! kingfisher flashing from bank to bank, and all fulfilment of natural desire, whether it is what the male novelist says it is; or prayer; or denial; hail! in whatever form it comes, and may there be more forms, and stranger.