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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
Write
Death
Must
Writing
Abject
Life
Earned
People
Failure
Already
Stop

More quotes by 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.
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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I have arranged my little life.
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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Life if curious when reduced to its essentials
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 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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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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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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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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It is strange how sad it can be - sunlight in the afternoon, don't you think?
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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Not that she objected to solitude. Quite the contrary. She had books, thank Heaven, quantities of books. All sorts of books.
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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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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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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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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I didn't know, I didn't know, I didn't know.
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