Virginia Woolf is one of my favorite writers and To the Lighthouse is my favorite book of hers. It’s not expressly a love story, but there is romance flowing across every page, to and from each one of the characters, often showing up in the most surprising places. I am always in awe of Woolf’s ability to jump in one character’s mind one paragraph, then leave it to enter another character’s mind in the next. She writes a killer dinner party scene.

My closest friend Megan (some of you may have heard me speak about how Lucinda was based in part on her) read this passage from the point of view of Lily Briscoe at my wedding:

“What art was there to love, by which one pressed through into secret chambers? What device for becoming, like waters poured into one jar, inextricably the same, one with the object one adored? Could the body achieve, or the mind, subtly mingling in the intricate passages of the brain? Or the heart? Could loving make them one? For it was not knowledge, but unity that was desired, not inscriptions on tablets, nothing that could be written in any language known to man, but intimacy itself–which is knowledge.”

Feel free to share your favorite romantic passage from a novel below!

Until tomorrow,
Lauren