Jean Rhys quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Jean Rhys

Jean Rhys Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Jean Rhys on Wise Famous Quotes.

Satin skin, silk hair, velvet eyes, sawdust heart - all complete.

...poverty is the cause of many compromises.

Rain, forever raining. Drown me in sleep. And soon.

I am sad, sad as a circus-lioness ...

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

I have been too unhappy, I thought, it cannot last, being so unhappy, it would kill you

The rumble of the life outside was like the sound of the sea which was rising gradually around her.

Even the one moment that you thought was your eternity fades out and is forgotten and dies.

It's so easy to make a person who hasn't got anything seem wrong.

What you take to be hyprocrisy is sometimes a certain caution, sometimes genuine, though ponderous, childish, sometimes a mixture of both.

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

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

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

Why are you sad?

And then the days came when I was alone.

When you insult or injure the unfortunate or the unhappy, you insult Christ Himself and He will not forget, for they are His chosen ones.

Unhappily children do hurt flies

Can I help it if my heart beats, if my hands go cold?

Morbidly, attracted him to strangeness, to recklessnesss, even unhappiness.

I wanted it-like iron.

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

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.

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

Only the magic and the dream are true - all the rest's a lie.

You can pretend for a long time, but one day it all falls away and you are alone. We are alone in the most beautiful place in the world ...

Do you think that too," she said, "that I have slept too long in the moonlight?

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

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

Of course she had some pathetic illusions about herself or she would not be able to go on living.

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

Nothing left but hopelessness.' Say die and I will die. Say die and watch me die.

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

There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about.

Quite alone. No voice, no touch, no hand ... How long must I lie here? For ever? No, only for a couple of hundred years this time, miss ...

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

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

There is always another side, always.

When I think about it, if I had to choose, I'd rather be happy than write.

Next week, or next month, or next year I will kill myself. But I might as well last out my month's rent, which has been paid up ...

That's all you're waiting for, isn't it? But no, you must have the slow death, the bloodless killing that leaves no stain on your conscience ...

I try, but they always see through me. The passages will never lead anywhere, the doors will always be shut.

I thought if I told no one it might not be true.

Human beings are struggling, and so they are egoists. But it's wrong to say that they are wholy cruel - it's a deformed view.

It's funny, he said, have you ever thought that a girl's clothes cost more than the girl inside them?

Something in her brain that still remained calm told her that she was doing a very foolish thing indeed.

The musty smell, the bugs, the lonliness, this room, which is part of the street outside-this is all I want from life.

I am the only real truth I know.

Everything tender and melancholy - as life is sometimes, just for one moment.

There is no control over memory.

May you tear each other to bits, you damned hyenas, and the quicker the better. Let it be destroyed. Let it happen. Let it end, this cold insanity.

Have all beautiful things sad destinies?

I will write my name in fire red.

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

I am empty of everything. I am empty of everything but the thin, frail ghosts in my room.

She was a shadow, kept alive by a flame of hatred for somebody who had long ago forgotten all about her.

Wasn't it quite difficult being a wicked girl? Even more difficult than being a good one?

How can I discover truth I thought and that thought led me nowhere. No one would tell me the truth.

Quite like old times,' the room says.

Have spunks and do battle for yourself

Saved, rescued, but not quite so good as new...

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

There is always the other side, always.

The perpetual hunger to be beautiful and that thirst to be loved which is the real curse of Eve.

London is like a cold dark dream sometimes.

She lifted her eyes. Blank, lovely eyes. Mad eyes. A mad girl.

Age seldom arrives smoothly or quickly. It's more often a succession of jerks.

Anything you like; anything I like ... No past to make us sentimental, no future to embarrass us

A room is, after all, a place where you hide from the wolves. That's all any room is.

They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did.

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).

I got quite used to changing that cheque, because you can get used to anything. You think: I'll never do that; and you find yourself doing it.

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

Today I must be very careful, today I have left my armor at home.

I want more of this feeling - fire and wings.

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

Vain, silly creature. Made for loving? Yes, but she'll have no lover, for I don't want her and she'll see no other.

The devil prince of this world, but this world don't last so long for mortal man.

Get up, girl, and dress yourself. Woman must have spunks to live in this wicked world."

Christophine to Antoinette

I had two longings and one was fighting the other. I wanted to be loved and I wanted to be always alone.

What I see is nothing - I want what it hides - that is not nothing.

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

Blot out the moon,
Pull down the stars.
Love in the dark, for we're for the dark
So soon, so soon.

I didn't know, I didn't know, I didn't know.

Only seven or eight, and yet she knew so exactly how to be cruel and who it was safe to be cruel to. One must admire Nature..

Would you like a whiskey?' I say. 'I've got some.'
(That's original. I bet nobody's ever thought of that way of bridging the gap before.)

I must remember about chandeliers and dancing, about swans and roses and snow.

The last time you were happy about nothing; the first time you were afraid about nothing. Which came first?

Lies are never forgotten, they go on and they grow

I can't sleep,' he said. 'Let me lie with my head on your silver breast.

I have arranged my little life.

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

Life if curious when reduced to its essentials

If I could choose I would rather be happy than write.

Saved, rescued, fished-up, half-drowned, out of the deep, dark river, dry clothes, hair shampooed and set. Nobody would know I had ever been in it.

Now at last I know why I was brought here and what I have to do.

There is no doubt that running away on a fresh, blue morning can be exhilarating.

You surpise me, because people nearly always force you to ask, don't they?

At twenty-four she imagined with dread that she was growing old.

She had ignored the Heidlers because she realized that she could afford to display coldness, and that no good ever comes from being too polite.

She haunted him, as an ungenerous action haunts one.