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Of course she had some pathetic illusions about herself or she would not be able to go on living.

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
Courses
Course
Living
Able
Would
Illusions
Pathetic
Illusion

More quotes by Jean Rhys

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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
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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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Age seldom arrives smoothly or quickly. It's more often a succession of jerks.
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The rumble of the life outside was like the sound of the sea which was rising gradually around her.
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I have arranged my little life.
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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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She’ll have no lover, for I don’t want her and she’ll see no other.
Jean Rhys
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Not that she objected to solitude. Quite the contrary. She had books, thank Heaven, quantities of books. All sorts of books.
Jean Rhys
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She haunted him, as an ungenerous action haunts one.
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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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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
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I am the only real truth I know.
Jean Rhys
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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.
Jean Rhys
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What you take to be hyprocrisy is sometimes a certain caution, sometimes genuine, though ponderous, childish, sometimes a mixture of both.
Jean Rhys
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The feeling of Sunday is the same everywhere, heavy, melancholy, standing still.
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I found when I was a child that if I put the hurt into words, it would go.
Jean Rhys
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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
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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.
Jean Rhys
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When I think about it, if I had to choose, I'd rather be happy than write.
Jean Rhys
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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.
Jean Rhys