The Hours (Virginia Woolf)
If I were thinking clearly? If I were thinking clearly, Leonard, I would tell you that I wrestle alone in the dark, in the deep dark and that only I can know. Only I can understand my own condition. You live with the threat, you tell me. You live with the threat of my extinction. Leonard, I live with it too. This is my right. It is the right of every human being. I choose not the suffocating anesthetic of the suburbs but the violent jolt of the capital. That is my choice. The meanest patient, yes even the very lowest, is allowed some say in the matter of her own prescription. Thereby she defines her humanity. I wish for your sake, Leonard, that I could be happy in this quietness. But if it is a choice between Richmond and death, I choose death.
