Also the sea tosses itself and breaks itself, and should any sleeper fancying that [she] might find on the beach an answer to [her] doubts, a sharer of [her] solitude, throw off [her] bedclothes and go down by [herself] to walk on the sand, no image with semblance of serving and divine promptitude comes readily to hand bringing the night to order and making the world reflect the compass of the soul. The hand dwindles in [her] hand; the voice bellows in [her] ear. Almost it would appear that it is useless in such confusion to ask the night those questions as to what, and why, and wherefore, which tempt the sleeper from [her] bed to seek an answer.
(Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse,
ed. by Sandra Kemp, London/New York, Routledge, 1996 [1994], p. 130.
Obrigada, C., obrigada, M.C.)
