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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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Jean Rhys
Age: 88 †
Born: 1890
Born: August 24
Died: 1979
Died: May 14
Novelist
Writer
Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams
Ella Rees Williams
Sound
Around
Life
Like
Rumble
Gradually
Rising
Sea
Outside

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It was the darkness that got you. It was heavy darkness, greasy and compelling. It made walls round you, and shut you in so that you felt like you could not breathe.
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When he talked his eyes went away from mine and then he forced himself to look straight at me and he began to explain and I knew that he felt very strange with me and that he hated me, and it was funny sitting there and talking like that, knowing he hated me.
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Cold - cold as truth, cold as life. No, nothing can be as cold as life.
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All of a writer that matters is in the book or books. It is idiotic to be curious about the person.
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I have arranged my little life.
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I am the only real truth I know.
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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.
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There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about.
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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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And then the days came when I was alone.
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She’ll have no lover, for I don’t want her and she’ll see no other.
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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.
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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
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It is strange how sad it can be - sunlight in the afternoon, don't you think?
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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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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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I like shape very much. A novel has to have shape, and life doesn't have any.
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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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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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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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