"What if you decided to want no more?" (214)
Laura says this as she is preparing to go to bed, but this is possibly one of the most important quotes in the entire book. One of the problems that all three of the women deal with is that none of them are truly happy, they all want more. Virginia wants to move to London because she thinks it'll make her feel better. Clarissa wants more complexity in her life; she is unhappy with how simple and easy everything is with Sally. And Laura wants Kitty, but she is married to a man who is perfectly content. These three women all wish they had more. Their desires are the driving force behind their feelings of unhappiness.
http://www.pbs.org/edens/thailand/buddhism.htm
This link is an article about the basics of Buddhism. The basic values of Buddhism are all very closely related to the above quote. According to Buddhism, desire is the leading cause of unhappiness. In The Hours, the women's problems all arise from their need to have more.
Passionate, profound, and deeply moving, The Hours is the story of three women: Clarissa Vaughan, who one New York morning goes about planning a party in honor of a beloved friend; Laura Brown, who in a 1950s Los Angeles suburb slowly begins to feel the constraints of a perfect family and home; and Virginia Woolf, recuperating with her husband in a London suburb, and beginning to write Mrs. Dalloway.
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