Jean Rhys Quotes - Page 2

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

  Jean Rhys

  Goes On, Able, Illusion

  13 Copy quote

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

  Jean Rhys

  Lasts, Firsts, First Time

  11 Copy quote

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

  Jean Rhys

  Home, Today, Armor

  17 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

  14 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

  5 Copy quote

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

  Jean Rhys

  Knows

  8 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

  22 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

  5 Copy quote

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

  Jean Rhys

  Beautiful, Real, Hunger

  'The Left Bank' (1927) 'Illusion'

  10 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

  23 Copy quote

• I am sad, sad as a circus-lioness.

  Jean Rhys

  Lioness, Circus

  29 Copy quote

• ...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.

  Jean Rhys

  Rags, Illusion, Havens

  11 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

  15 Copy quote

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

  Jean Rhys

  Sometimes, Life Is, Melancholy

  12 Copy quote

• I have arranged my little life.

  Jean Rhys

  Littles

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Jean Rhys

  Shadow, Important, Substance

  Jean Rhys (1981). “Quartet”

  6 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

  8 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

  20 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

  10 Copy quote

• Life if curious when reduced to its essentials

  Jean Rhys

  Essentials, Curious, Ifs

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Jean Rhys

  Giving, Unhappy, Firsts

  10 Copy quote

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

  Jean Rhys

  Past, Bird, Helping

  Jean Rhys (1966). “Wide Sargasso Sea”

  8 Copy quote

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

  Jean Rhys

  Thinking, Ankles, Weight

  16 Copy quote

• 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.

  Jean Rhys

  Writing, People, Has Beens

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

  15 Copy quote

• 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.

  Jean Rhys

  Past, Practice, Sentimental

  15 Copy quote

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