Quote

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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Jean Rhys
Age: 88 †
Born: 1890
Born: August 24
Died: 1979
Died: May 14
Novelist
Writer
Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams
Ella Rees Williams
Like
Starting
People
Tired
Expression
Eyes
Eye
Dream
Everything
Things
Underneath

More quotes by Jean Rhys

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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.
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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Life if curious when reduced to its essentials
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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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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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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Even the one moment that you thought was your eternity fades out and is forgotten and dies.
Jean Rhys
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There is no doubt that running away on a fresh, blue morning can be exhilarating.
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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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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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.
Jean Rhys
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I am the only real truth I know.
Jean Rhys
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And what does anyone know about traitors, or why Judas did what he did?
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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It is strange how sad it can be - sunlight in the afternoon, don't you think?
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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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 I think about it, if I had to choose, I'd rather be happy than write.
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.
Jean Rhys
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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