Jean Rhys > Quotes

“I like shape very much. A novel has to have shape, and life doesn't have any. ”
― Jean Rhys, Smile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography

“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, Wide Sargasso Sea

“Today I must be very careful, today I have left my armor at home.”
― Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight

“There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about.”
― Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea

“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, Smile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography

“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, Wide Sargasso Sea

“If I was bound for hell, let it be hell. No more false heavens. No more damned magic. You hate me and I hate you. We’ll see who hates best. But first, first I will destroy your hatred. Now. My hate is colder, stronger, and you’ll have no hate to warm yourself. You will have nothing.”
― Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea

“A room is, after all, a place where you hide from the wolves. That's all any room is.”
― Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight

“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, Good Morning, Midnight

“Blot out the moon,
Pull down the stars.
Love in the dark, for we're for the dark
So soon, so soon.”
― Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea

“And what does anyone know about traitors, or why Judas did what he did?”
― Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea

“Something came out from my heart into my throat and then into my eyes.”
― Jean Rhys, Voyage in the Dark

“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

“We can't all be happy, we can't all be rich, we can't all be lucky - and it would be so much less fun if we were... There must be the dark background to show up the bright colours. ”
― Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight

“Justice," she said. " I've heard that word. It's a cold world. I tried it out," she said, still speaking in that low voice. "I wrote it down. I wrote it down several times and always it looked like a damn cold lie to me. There is no justice.”
― Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea

“Only the magic and the dream are true — all the rest's a lie.”
― Jean Rhys

“Have all beautiful things sad destinies?”
― Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea

“...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, Good Morning, Midnight

“And I saw that all my life I had known that this was going to happen, and that I'd been afraid for a long time, I'd been afraid for a long time. There's fear, of course, with everybody. But now it had grown, it had grown gigantic; it filled me and it filled the whole world.”
― Jean Rhys, Voyage in the Dark

“Not that she objected to solitude. Quite the contrary. She had books, thank Heaven, quantities of books. All sorts of books.”
― Jean Rhys, Quartet

“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, Good Morning, Midnight

“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, Good Morning, Midnight

“There is always another side, always.”
― Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea

“Every word I say has chains round its ankles; every thought I think is weighted with heavy weights.”
― Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight

“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.”
― Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea

“I had two longings and one was fighting the other. I wanted to be loved and I wanted to be always alone.”
― Jean Rhys

“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, Good Morning, Midnight

“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

“that expression you get in your eyes when you are very tired and everything is like a dream and you are starting to know what things are like underneath what people say they are.”
― Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight

“As soon as I turned the key I saw it hanging, the color of fire and sunset. the colour of flamboyant flowers. ‘If you are buried under a flamboyant tree, ‘ I said, ‘your soul is lifted up when it flowers. Everyone wants that.’

She shook her head but she did not move or touch me.”
― Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea