Jean Rhys Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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.

  Jean Rhys

  Life, Being Yourself, I Dont Care

  71 Copy quote

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

  Jean Rhys

  Dream, Lying, Magic

  Jean Rhys (2001). “Wide Sargasso Sea”, Gardners Books

  8 Copy quote

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

  Jean Rhys

  Beautiful, Successful, Wish

  20 Copy quote

• My life, which seems so simple and monotonous, is really a complicated affair of cafés where they like me and cafés where they don't, streets that are friendly, streets that aren't, rooms where I might be happy, rooms where I shall never be, looking-glasses I look nice in, looking-glasses I don't, dresses that will be lucky, dresses that won't, and so on.

  Jean Rhys

  Nice, Simple, Glasses

  35 Copy quote

• There is always the other side, always.

  Jean Rhys

  Sides

  Jean Rhys (2001). “Wide Sargasso Sea”, Gardners Books

  5 Copy quote

• I am the only real truth I know.

  Jean Rhys

  Truth, Real, Acceptance

  Jean Rhys, Isak Dinesen (1978). “Women Fiction 2”

  21 Copy quote

• 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.

  Jean Rhys

  Writing, Lakes, Rivers

  34 Copy quote

• 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.

  Jean Rhys

  Beautiful, Fall, Long

  Jean Rhys (2001). “Wide Sargasso Sea”, Gardners Books

  24 Copy quote

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

  Jean Rhys

  Book, Writing, Matter

  1 Copy quote

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

  Jean Rhys

  Rooms

  26 Copy quote

• Have all beautiful things sad destinies?

  Jean Rhys

  Beautiful, Destiny, Beautiful Things

  Jean Rhys (1966). “Wide Sargasso Sea”

  10 Copy quote

• When you are a child you are yourself and you know and see everything prophetically. And then suddenly something happens and you stop being yourself; you become what others force you to be. You lose your wisdom and your soul.

  Jean Rhys

  Being Yourself, Children, Soul

  Jean Rhys (1985). “Tales of the wide Caribbean”, Heinemann Educational Publishers

  10 Copy quote

• The feeling of Sunday is the same everywhere, heavy, melancholy, standing still.

  Jean Rhys

  Friday, Sunday, Weekend

  Voyage in the Dark (1934) ch. 4, pt. 1

  24 Copy quote

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

  Jean Rhys

  Hurt, Children, Healing

  1 Copy quote

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

  Jean Rhys

  People, Faces, Spit

  4 Copy quote

• Life if curious when reduced to its essentials

  Jean Rhys

  Essentials, Curious, Ifs

  4 Copy quote

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

  Jean Rhys

  Running, Morning, Adventure

  Jean Rhys (2017). “The Collected Short Stories”, p.120, Penguin UK

  1 Copy quote

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

  Jean Rhys

  Littles, Matter, Ridiculous

  19 Copy quote

• I want more of this feeling - fire and wings.

  Jean Rhys

  Fire, Wings, Feelings

  3 Copy quote

• 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.

  Jean Rhys

  Hurt, Party, Thinking

  Jean Rhys, Francis Wyndham, Diana Melly (1984). “The letters of Jean Rhys”, Viking Adult

  17 Copy quote

• I have arranged my little life.

  Jean Rhys

  Littles

  3 Copy quote

• 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.

  Jean Rhys

  Rain, Sunset, Rivers

  14 Copy quote

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

  Jean Rhys

  Lasts, Knows

  Jean Rhys (2001). “Wide Sargasso Sea”, Gardners Books

  3 Copy quote

• 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.

  Jean Rhys

  Hurt, Long, People

  Jean Rhys (1985). “Tales of the wide Caribbean”, Heinemann Educational Publishers

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  Jean Rhys

  Light, Air, Blue

  9 Copy quote

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