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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
Rags
Illusion
Havens
Haven
Told
Often
Left
Clothe

More quotes by 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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After all this, what happened? What happened was that, as soon as I had the slightest chance of a place to hide in, I crept into it and hid. Well, sometimes it's a fine day isn't it? Sometimes the skies are blue. Sometimes the air is light, easy to breathe. And there is always tomorrow.
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I sit at my window and the words fly past me like birds — with God's help I catch some.
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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.
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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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She could give herself up to the written word as naturally as a good dancer to music or a fine swimmer to water. The only difficulty was that after finishing the last sentence she was left with a feeling at once hollow and uncomfortably full. Exactly like indigestion.
Jean Rhys
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If I was bound for hell, let it be hell. No more false heaven. No more damned magic.
Jean Rhys
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No past to make us sentimental, no future to embarrass us...a difficult moment when you are out of practice - a moment that makes you go cold, cold and wary.
Jean Rhys
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Even the one moment that you thought was your eternity fades out and is forgotten and dies.
Jean Rhys
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before I could read, almost a baby, I imagined that God, this strange thing or person I heard about, was a book.
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
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I am sad, sad as a circus-lioness.
Jean Rhys
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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.
Jean Rhys
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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.
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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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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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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She haunted him, as an ungenerous action haunts one.
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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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