Best 104 quotes of Jean Rhys on MyQuotes

Jean Rhys

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    Jean Rhys

    After all this, what happened? What happened was that, as soon as I had the slightest chance of a place to hide in, I crept into it and hid. Well, sometimes it's a fine day isn't it? Sometimes the skies are blue. Sometimes the air is light, easy to breathe. And there is always tomorrow.

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    Jean Rhys

    All of a writer that matters is in the book or books. It is idiotic to be curious about the person.

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    Jean Rhys

    All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky. And then there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don't matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake.

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    Jean Rhys

    And I saw that all my life I had known that this was going to happen, and that I'd been afraid for a long time, I'd been afraid for a long time. There's fear, of course, with everybody. But now it had grown, it had grown gigantic; it filled me and it filled the whole world.

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    Jean Rhys

    And what does anyone know about traitors, or why Judas did what he did?

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    Jean Rhys

    A room? A nice room? A beautiful room? A beautiful room with bath? Swing high, swing low, swing to and fro...This happened and that happened... And then the days came and I was alone.

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    Jean Rhys

    As it was in the beginning, ... is now, and ever shall be, world without end.

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    Jean Rhys

    As soon as I turned the key I saw it hanging, the color of fire and sunset. the colour of flamboyant flowers. ‘If you are buried under a flamboyant tree, ‘ I said, ‘your soul is lifted up when it flowers. Everyone wants that.’ She shook her head but she did not move or touch me.

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    Jean Rhys

    before I could read, almost a baby, I imagined that God, this strange thing or person I heard about, was a book.

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    Jean Rhys

    But they never last, the golden days. And it can be sad, the sun in the afternoon, can't it? Yes, it can be sad, the afternoon sun, sad and frightening.

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    Jean Rhys

    But why do you want to talk to me?' He is going to say: 'Because you look so kind,' or 'Because you look so beautiful and kind,' or, subtly, 'Because you look as if you'll understand....' He says: 'Because I think you won't betray me.' I had meant to get this mean to talk to me and tell me all about it, and then be so devastatingly English that perhaps I should manage to hurt him a little in return for all the many times I've been hurt.... 'Because I think you won't betray me, because I think you won't betray me....' Now it won't be so easy.

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    Jean Rhys

    Cold - cold as truth, cold as life. No, nothing can be as cold as life.

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    Jean Rhys

    Every word I say has chains round its ankles; every thought I think is weighted with heavy weights.

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    Jean Rhys

    Every word I say has chains round its ankles; every thought I think is weighted with heavy weights. Since I was born, hasn't every word I've said, every thought I've thought, everything I've done, been tied up, weighted, chained? And mind you, I know that with all this I don't succeed. Or I succeed in flashes only too damned well. ...But think how hard I try and how seldom I dare. Think - and have a bit of pity. That is, if you ever think, you apes, which I doubt.

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    Jean Rhys

    For the first time she had dimly realized that only the hopeless are starkly sincere and that only the unhappy can either give or take sympathy--even some of the bitter and dangerous voluptuousness of misery.

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    Jean Rhys

    He had discovered that people who allow themselves to be blown about by the winds of emotion and impulse are always unhappy people.

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    Jean Rhys

    I am the only real truth I know.

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    Jean Rhys

    If all good, respectable people had one face, I'd spit in it.

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    Jean Rhys

    If I was bound for hell, let it be hell. No more false heaven. No more damned magic.

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    Jean Rhys

    I found when I was a child that if I put the hurt into words, it would go.

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    Jean Rhys

    If she says goodbye perhaps adieu. Adieu - like those old time songs she sang. Always adieu (and all songs say it). If she too says it, or weeps, I'll take her in my arms, my lunatic. She's mad but mine, mine. What will I care for gods or devils or for Fate itself. If she smiles or weeps or both. For me.

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    Jean Rhys

    I hadn't bargained for this. I didn't think it would be like this - shabby clothes, worn-out shoes, circles under your eyes, your hair getting straight and lanky, the way people look at you. ... I didn't think it would be like this

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    Jean Rhys

    I have been here five days. I have decided on a place to eat in at midday, a place to eat in at night, a place to have my drink in after dinner. I have arranged my little life.

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    Jean Rhys

    I have tried," I said, "but he does not believe me. It is too late for that now" (it is always too late for truth, I thought).

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    Jean Rhys

    ...I know all about myself now, I know. You've told me so often. You haven't left me one rag of illusion to clothe myself in.

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    Jean Rhys

    I long to be ... Like Other People! The extraordinary, ungetatable, oddly cruel Other People, with their way of wantonly hurting and then accusing you of being thin-skinned, sulky, vindictive or ridiculous.

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    Jean Rhys

    I'm no use to anybody,' I say. 'I'm a cérébrale, can't you see that?' Thinking how funny a book would be, called 'Just a Cérébrale or You Can't Stop Me From Dreaming'. Only, of course, to be accepted as authentic, to carry any conviction, it would have to be written by a man. What a pity, what a pity!

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    Jean Rhys

    I often want to cry. That is the only advantage women have over men — at least they can cry.

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    Jean Rhys

    I sit at my window and the words fly past me like birds — with God's help I catch some.

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    Jean Rhys

    I think that the desire to be cruel and to hurt (with words because any other way might be dangerous to ourself) is part of human nature. Parties are battles (most parties), a conversation is a duel (often). Everybody's trying to hurt first, to get in the dig that will make him or her feel superior, feel triumph.

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    Jean Rhys

    It is strange how sad it can be - sunlight in the afternoon, don't you think?

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    Jean Rhys

    I took the red dress down and put it against myself. 'Does it make me look intemperate and unchaste?' I said.

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    Jean Rhys

    It was like letting go and falling back into water and seeing yourself grinning up through the water, your face like a mask, and seeing the bubbles coming up as if you were trying to speak from under the water. And how do you know what it's like to try to speak from under water when you're drowned?

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    Jean Rhys

    It was the darkness that got you. It was heavy darkness, greasy and compelling. It made walls round you, and shut you in so that you felt like you could not breathe.

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    Jean Rhys

    I've been so ridiculous all my life that a little bit more or a little bit less hardly matters now.

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    Jean Rhys

    I watched her die many times. In my way, not in hers. In sunlight, in shadow, by moonlight, by candlelight. In the long afternoons when the house was empty. Only the sun was there to keep us company. We shut him out. And why not? Very soon she was as eager for what's called loving as I was - more lost and drowned afterwards.

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    Jean Rhys

    I would never be part of anything. I would never really belong anywhere, and I knew it, and all my life would be the same, trying to belong, and failing. Always something would go wrong. I am a stranger and I always will be, and after all I didn’t really care.

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    Jean Rhys

    London is like a cold dark dream sometimes.

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    Jean Rhys

    Love was a terrible thing. You poisoned it and stabbed at it and knocked it down into the mud - well down - and it got up and staggered on, bleeding and muddy and awful. Like - like Rasputin.

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    Jean Rhys

    No past to make us sentimental, no future to embarrass us...a difficult moment when you are out of practice - a moment that makes you go cold, cold and wary.

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    Jean Rhys

    Not that she objected to solitude. Quite the contrary. She had books, thank Heaven, quantities of books. All sorts of books.

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    Jean Rhys

    Now I no longer wish to be loved, beautiful, happy or successful. I want one thing and one thing only - to be left alone.

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    Jean Rhys

    One realized all sorts of things. The value of an illusion, for instance, and that the shadow can be more important than the substance. All sorts of things.

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    Jean Rhys

    She could give herself up to the written word as naturally as a good dancer to music or a fine swimmer to water. The only difficulty was that after finishing the last sentence she was left with a feeling at once hollow and uncomfortably full. Exactly like indigestion.

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    Jean Rhys

    She had left me thirsty and all my life would be thirst and longing for what I had lost before I found it.

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    Jean Rhys

    Some must cry so that others may be able to laugh the more heartily. Sacrifices are necessary.

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    Jean Rhys

    Something came out from my heart into my throat and then into my eyes.

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    Jean Rhys

    Sometimes the Earth trembles; sometimes you can feel it breathe.

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    Jean Rhys

    Soon he'll come in again and kiss me, but differently. He'll be different and so I'll be different. It'll be different. I thought, 'It'll be different, different. It must be different.

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    Jean Rhys

    Stephan was secretive and a liar, but he was a very gentle and expert lover. She was the petted, cherished child, the desired mistress, the worshipped, perfumed goddess. She was all these things to Stephan - or so he made her believe.