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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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Jean Rhys
Age: 88 †
Born: 1890
Born: August 24
Died: 1979
Died: May 14
Novelist
Writer
Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams
Ella Rees Williams
Lover
Lovers

More quotes by Jean Rhys

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When I think about it, if I had to choose, I'd rather be happy than write.
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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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Of course she had some pathetic illusions about herself or she would not be able to go on living.
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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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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.
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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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What you take to be hyprocrisy is sometimes a certain caution, sometimes genuine, though ponderous, childish, sometimes a mixture of both.
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I want more of this feeling - fire and wings.
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
Jean Rhys
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She haunted him, as an ungenerous action haunts one.
Jean Rhys
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I like shape very much. A novel has to have shape, and life doesn't have any.
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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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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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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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
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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 the only real truth I know.
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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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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The feeling of Sunday is the same everywhere, heavy, melancholy, standing still.
Jean Rhys