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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.
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
Heavy
Darkness
Greasy
Wall
Compelling
Felt
Walls
Made
Shut
Like
Round
Rounds
Breathe
More quotes by Jean Rhys
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
I want more of this feeling - fire and wings.
Jean Rhys
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?
Jean Rhys
She’ll have no lover, for I don’t want her and she’ll see no other.
Jean Rhys
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.
Jean Rhys
And what does anyone know about traitors, or why Judas did what he did?
Jean Rhys
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.
Jean Rhys
The feeling of Sunday is the same everywhere, heavy, melancholy, standing still.
Jean Rhys
I found when I was a child that if I put the hurt into words, it would go.
Jean Rhys
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
Cold - cold as truth, cold as life. No, nothing can be as cold as life.
Jean Rhys
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
When I think about it, if I had to choose, I'd rather be happy than write.
Jean Rhys
Of course she had some pathetic illusions about herself or she would not be able to go on living.
Jean Rhys
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.
Jean Rhys
I sit at my window and the words fly past me like birds — with God's help I catch some.
Jean Rhys
And then the days came when I was alone.
Jean Rhys
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
If I was bound for hell, let it be hell. No more false heaven. No more damned magic.
Jean Rhys
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
