How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
For a while they are all absorbed in the ritual of his leaving: the taking on of the jacket and briefcase; the flurry of kisses; the waves, he from over his shoulder as he crosses the lawn to the driveway, Laura and Richie from behind the screen door. Their lawn, extravagantly watered, is a brilliant, almost unearthly green. Laura and Richie stand like spectators at a parade as the man pilots his ice-blue Chevrolet down the short driveway and into the street. He waves one last time, jauntily, from behind the wheel. (3.52)
Laura Brown sometimes feels that there is something unsettling about life in suburban Los Angeles. There are times when something feels pre-packaged or unreal about the roles that everyone is playing. The perfect rows of houses with their "unearthly" lawns have a Stepford Wives kind of vibe—and that's not a good thing.
Quote #5
His apartment is, as always, dim and close, overheated, full of the sage and juniper incense Richard burns to cover the smells of illness. It is unutterably cluttered, inhabited here and there by a wan circle of pulverized non-dark emanating from the brown-shaded lamps in which Richard will tolerate no bulb more powerful than fifteen watts. The apartment has, more than anything, an underwater aspect. Clarissa walks through it as she would negotiate the hold of a sunken ship. (4.25)
Richard Brown's apartment is the physical manifestation of his unusual state of mind. Just as Richard's illness makes it hard for him to separate dreams from reality, his apartment makes Clarissa Vaughan feel "as if she has passed through a dimensional warp—through the looking glass, as it were" (4.25).
Quote #6
Although it is among the best of them, Richmond is, finally and undeniably, a suburb, only that, with all the word implies about window boxes and hedges; about wives walking pugs; about clocks striking the hours in empty rooms. Virginia thinks of the love of a girl. She despises Richmond. She is starved for London; she dreams sometimes about the hearts of cities. (7.7)
Even though she has lived in Richmond, England for roughly eight years, it will never feel like "home" to Virginia Woolf. Virginia longs for the excitement and vitality of the city, and she can't wait to leave the sedate suburb behind.