Keira Knightley by Patrick Demarchelier for Interview Magazine (Sept. 2014).
«Pensant en aquesta llarga amista de gairebé trenta anys, la seva teoria funcionava. Breus, discontínues, tot sovint doloroses com havien estat les seves trobades, deixant de banda les absències i les interrupcions (aquest matí, per exemple, havia entrat l’Elizabeth, bella i muda com un poltre de cames llargues, just quan ell començava a parlar amb la Clarissa), l’efecte que havien tingut sobre la vida era incommensurable. Eren tot un misteri. Et donaven una llavor punxeguda, intensa, desconcertant —la trobada en si; horrorosament dolorosa la major part de les vegades; tanmateix, en l’absència, en els llocs més improbables, floria, s’obria, propagava la seva aroma, es deixava acariciar, assaborir, mirar, treure’n tot el sentit i comprensió després d’anys d’haver-la perduda. Així li havia tornat al cap la Clarissa; a bord d’un vaixell; a l’Himàlaia; evocada per les coses més estranyes (com la Sally Seton, aquella ximpleta generosa i entusiasta, pensava en ell quan veia hortènsies blaves). Ella l’havia influït més que cap altra persona que havia conegut mai. I sempre presentant-se d’aquesta manera sense ser convocada, freda, distingida, lúcida; o enlluernadora, romàntica, evocant un camp o una collita anglesa. La veia més sovint al camp que no pas a Londres. Tantes escenes, a Bourton, tantes…»
«Looking back over that long friendship of almost thirty years her theory worked to this extent. Brief, broken, often painful as their actual meetings had been what with his absences and interruptions (this morning, for instance, in came Elizabeth, like a long-legged colt, handsome, dumb, just as he was beginning to talk to Clarissa) the effect of them on his life was immeasurable. There was a mystery about it. You were given a sharp, acute, uncomfortable grain—the actual meeting; horribly painful as often as not; yet in absence, in the most unlikely places, it would flower out, open, shed its scent, let you touch, taste, look about you, get the whole feel of it and understanding, after years of lying lost. Thus she had come to him; on board ship; in the Himalayas; suggested by the oddest things (so Sally Seton, generous, enthusiastic goose! thought of HIM when she saw blue hydrangeas). She had influenced him more than any person he had ever known. And always in this way coming before him without his wishing it, cool, lady-like, critical; or ravishing, romantic, recalling some field or English harvest. He saw her most often in the country, not in London. One scene after another at Bourton…»
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), La senyora Dalloway [Mrs Dalloway, 1925]. Traducció de Dolors Udina. Barcelona: RBA La Magrana, 2013, pp. 168-169