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

  76 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

  12 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

  22 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

  39 Copy quote

• I am the only real truth I know.

  Jean Rhys

  Truth, Real, Acceptance

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

  24 Copy quote

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

  Jean Rhys

  Dresses, Doe, Looks

  Jean Rhys (1966). “Wide Sargasso Sea”

  3 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

  37 Copy quote

• There is always the other side, always.

  Jean Rhys

  Sides

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

  8 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

  29 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

  12 Copy quote

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

  Jean Rhys

  Rooms

  29 Copy quote

• Yes, I am sad, sad as a circus-lioness, sad as an eagle without wings, sad as a violin with only one string and that one broken, sad as a woman who is growing old. Sad, sad, sad.

  Jean Rhys

  Wings, Eagles, Broken

  44 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

  29 Copy quote

• Have all beautiful things sad destinies?

  Jean Rhys

  Beautiful, Destiny, Beautiful Things

  Jean Rhys (1966). “Wide Sargasso Sea”

  12 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

  4 Copy quote

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

  Jean Rhys

  People, Faces, Spit

  6 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

  3 Copy quote

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

  Jean Rhys

  White, People, Trouble

  Jean Rhys (1966). “Wide Sargasso Sea”

  3 Copy quote

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

  Jean Rhys

  Rooms, Ghost, Empty

  8 Copy quote

• Life if curious when reduced to its essentials

  Jean Rhys

  Essentials, Curious, Ifs

  6 Copy quote

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

  Jean Rhys

  Earth, Sometimes, Breathe

  7 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

  13 Copy quote

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

  Jean Rhys

  Home, Today, Armor

  15 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

  20 Copy quote

• You imagine the carefully pruned, shaped thing that is presented to you is truth. That is just what it isn't. The truth is improbable, the truth is fantastic; it's in what you think is a distorting mirror that you see the truth.

  Jean Rhys

  Thinking, Mirrors, Imagine

  7 Copy quote

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