Virginia Woolf is recognized as one of the great innovators of Modern fiction; her experiments with point of view have influenced many writers that followed her. But, one particularly interesting technique is her use of moments of being ...to wonder why some moments are so powerful and memorable even if the events itself are not important that they can be vividly recalled, while other events are easily forgotten. She concludes that there are two kinds of experiences: moments of being and moments of nonbeing. 

 The writer explains  even if not explicitly, , what she means by moment of being. She provides examples of these moments and contrasts them with moments of what she calls " non-being".          ... moments of nonbeing appear to be that the individual is not consciously aware even as she experiences them. She notes that people perform routines and tasks such as walking and shopping without thinking about them. This part of the life is " not lived consciously" , but instead is embedded in " a kind of non-descript cotton wool". It is not the nature of the actions that separates moments of being from moments of nonbeing. 

One activity is not intrinsically more mundane or more extraordinary than the other. Instead, it is the intensity of feeling, one's consciousness of experience that separates the two moments. A walk in the country can easily be hidden behind the cotton wool for one person, but for Virginia Woolf the experience is very vivid.  

 Virginia Woolf asserts that these moments of being, these flashes of awareness, reveal a pattern hidden behind the cotton wool of daily life, and that we " I mean all human beings- are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of arts; that we are parts of the work of art".

Virginia Woolf says " we are the Worlds; we are the music; we are the thing itself", thus for Virginia Woolf a moment of being is a moment when an individual is fully conscious of his experiences, a moment when he is not only aware of himself, but catches a glimpse of his connection to a large pattern hidden behind the opaque surface of daily life, unlike moments of nonbeing , when the individual lives and acts without awareness, performing acts as if asleep, the moment of being opens up an hidden reality.

Moments of being can be found in all Virginia Woolf's fiction. Examples of her novel Mrs Dalloway are to be found especially in the two main characters that are most receptive to moments of being: Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren. Clarissa experiences her moments of being while she is in the middle of  what appear to be trivial acts, indicating that it is not the action, but her awareness that sets a moment of being apart from her other experiences. 

 For example, as Clarissa watches taxi cabs pass by, she finds them " absolutely absorbing". Her thoughts reveal that " what she loved was this, here, in front of her, the fat lady in the cab...".  

 Throughout the day Clarissa is particularly aware of these threads of connections between herself and her surroundings.  

 Moments of being are immediate, they often do not allow a character to reflect or assign meaning to them. 

 The moments of being  are marked by particularly vivid and powerful language, because they are moments of exact feeling, the language used to convey them must be naturally precise and evocative; the form and content in perfect symmetry.  

 In her moments of being Virginia Woolf uses a language that approaches poetry