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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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More quotes by Jean Rhys

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Even the one moment that you thought was your eternity fades out and is forgotten and dies.
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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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The woman had a humble, cringing manner. Of course, she had discovered that, having neither money nor virtue, she had better be humble if she knew what was good for her.
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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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But they never last, the golden days. And it can be sad, the sun in the afternoon, can't it? Yes, it can be sad, the afternoon sun, sad and frightening.
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And what does anyone know about traitors, or why Judas did what he did?
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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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When I think about it, if I had to choose, I'd rather be happy than write.
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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.
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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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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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Of course she had some pathetic illusions about herself or she would not be able to go on living.
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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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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 rumble of the life outside was like the sound of the sea which was rising gradually around her.
Jean Rhys
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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.
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Soon he'll come in again and kiss me, but differently. He'll be different and so I'll be different. It'll be different. I thought, 'It'll be different, different. It must be different.
Jean Rhys
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...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
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I hadn't bargained for this. I didn't think it would be like this - shabby clothes, worn-out shoes, circles under your eyes, your hair getting straight and lanky, the way people look at you. ... I didn't think it would be like this
Jean Rhys
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I am sad, sad as a circus-lioness.
Jean Rhys