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I like shape very much. A novel has to have shape, and life doesn't have any.

Jean Rhys

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Jean Rhys
Age: 88 †
Born: 1890
Born: August 24
Died: 1979
Died: May 14
Novelist
Writer
Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams
Ella Rees Williams
Shape
Shapes
Novel
Doesn
Much
Life
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I want more of this feeling - fire and wings.
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It was like letting go and falling back into water and seeing yourself grinning up through the water, your face like a mask, and seeing the bubbles coming up as if you were trying to speak from under the water. And how do you know what it's like to try to speak from under water when you're drowned?
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Human beings are struggling, and so they are egoists. But it's wrong to say that they are wholy cruel - it's a deformed view.
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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.
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Your red dress,’ she said, and laughed. But I looked at the dress on the floor and it was as if the fire had spread across the room. It was beautiful and it reminded me of something I must do. I will remember I thought. I will remember quite soon now.
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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.
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Life if curious when reduced to its essentials
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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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Next week, or next month, or next year I will kill myself. But I might as well last out my month's rent, which has been paid up.
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He had discovered that people who allow themselves to be blown about by the winds of emotion and impulse are always unhappy people.
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The musty smell, the bugs, the lonliness, this room, which is part of the street outside-this is all I want from life.
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When I think about it, if I had to choose, I'd rather be happy than write.
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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.
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If I was bound for hell, let it be hell. No more false heaven. No more damned magic.
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Now I no longer wish to be loved, beautiful, happy or successful. I want one thing and one thing only - to be left alone.
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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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There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about.
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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.
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I found when I was a child that if I put the hurt into words, it would go.
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I've been so ridiculous all my life that a little bit more or a little bit less hardly matters now.
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