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I must write. If I stop writing my life will have been an abject failure. It is that already to other people. But it could be an abject failure to myself. I will not have earned death.

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
Death
Must
Writing
Abject
Life
Earned
People
Failure
Already
Stop
Write

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.
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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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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.
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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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When I think about it, if I had to choose, I'd rather be happy than write.
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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.
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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.
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She haunted him, as an ungenerous action haunts one.
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I didn't know, I didn't know, I didn't know.
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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.
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Quite like old times,' the room says.
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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.
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I found when I was a child that if I put the hurt into words, it would go.
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It's so easy to make a person who hasn't got anything seem wrong.
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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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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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I have arranged my little life.
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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 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.
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I want more of this feeling - fire and wings.
Jean Rhys