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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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Jean Rhys
Age: 88 †
Born: 1890
Born: August 24
Died: 1979
Died: May 14
Novelist
Writer
Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams
Ella Rees Williams
Much
Fun
Would
Rich
Life
Dark
Colours
Happy
Background
Less
Colour
Show
Backgrounds
Shows
Bright
Must
Lucky

More quotes by Jean Rhys

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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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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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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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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.
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Life if curious when reduced to its essentials
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Love was a terrible thing. You poisoned it and stabbed at it and knocked it down into the mud - well down - and it got up and staggered on, bleeding and muddy and awful. Like - like Rasputin.
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There is no doubt that running away on a fresh, blue morning can be exhilarating.
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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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I like shape very much. A novel has to have shape, and life doesn't have any.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Human beings are struggling, and so they are egoists. But it's wrong to say that they are wholy cruel - it's a deformed view.
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I want more of this feeling - fire and wings.
Jean Rhys
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I sit at my window and the words fly past me like birds — with God's help I catch some.
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.
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I have arranged my little life.
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Only the magic and the dream are true — all the rest's a lie.
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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I've been so ridiculous all my life that a little bit more or a little bit less hardly matters now.
Jean Rhys