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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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Jean Rhys
Age: 88 †
Born: 1890
Born: August 24
Died: 1979
Died: May 14
Novelist
Writer
Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams
Ella Rees Williams
Left
Clothe
Rags
Illusion
Havens
Haven
Told
Often

More quotes by Jean Rhys

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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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There is no doubt that running away on a fresh, blue morning can be exhilarating.
Jean Rhys
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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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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
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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
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The feeling of Sunday is the same everywhere, heavy, melancholy, standing still.
Jean Rhys
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As it was in the beginning, ... is now, and ever shall be, world without end.
Jean Rhys
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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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She haunted him, as an ungenerous action haunts one.
Jean Rhys
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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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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.
Jean Rhys
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There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about.
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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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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You can pretend for a long time, but one day it all falls away and you are alone. We are alone in the most beautiful place in the world.
Jean Rhys
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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.
Jean Rhys
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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.
Jean Rhys
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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.
Jean Rhys
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And what does anyone know about traitors, or why Judas did what he did?
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.
Jean Rhys