Jean Rhys Quotes
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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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Age seldom arrives smoothly or quickly. It's more often a succession of jerks.
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I must write. If I stop writing my life will have been an abject failure. It is that already to other people. But it could be an abject failure to myself. I will not have earned death.
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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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very few people change after well say seven or seventeen. Not really. They get more this or more that and of course look a bit different. But inside they are the same.
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...morbidly, attracted him to strangeness, to recklessnesss, even unhappiness.
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Something in her brain that still remained calm told her that she was doing a very foolish thing indeed.
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A room is, after all, a place where you hide from the wolves. That's all any room is.
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As it was in the beginning, ... is now, and ever shall be, world without end.
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I like shape very much. A novel has to have shape, and life doesn't have any.
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Of course she had some pathetic illusions about herself or she would not be able to go on living.
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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.
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The woman had a humble, cringing manner. Of course, she had discovered that, having neither money nor virtue, she had better be humble if she knew what was good for her.
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I hated the mountains and the hills, the rivers and the rain. I hated the sunsets of whatever colour, I hated its beauty and its magic and the secret I would never know. I hated its indifference and the cruelty which was part of its loveliness. Above all I hated her. For she belonged to the magic and the loveliness. 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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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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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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Life if curious when reduced to its essentials
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Quite like old times,' the room says.
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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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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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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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And then the days came when I was alone.
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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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Even the one moment that you thought was your eternity fades out and is forgotten and dies.
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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.
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I have arranged my little life.
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There is no doubt that running away on a fresh, blue morning can be exhilarating.
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Only the magic and the dream are true — all the rest's a lie.
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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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The last time you were happy about nothing; the first time you were afraid about nothing. Which came first?
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