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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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Jean Rhys
Age: 88 †
Born: 1890
Born: August 24
Died: 1979
Died: May 14
Novelist
Writer
Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams
Ella Rees Williams
Everything
Stop
Children
Wisdom
Something
Child
Force
Others
Happens
Suddenly
Become
Lose
Soul
Loses
More quotes by Jean Rhys
Of course she had some pathetic illusions about herself or she would not be able to go on living.
Jean Rhys
The rumble of the life outside was like the sound of the sea which was rising gradually around her.
Jean Rhys
There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about.
Jean Rhys
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.
Jean Rhys
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
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.
Jean Rhys
Not that she objected to solitude. Quite the contrary. She had books, thank Heaven, quantities of books. All sorts of books.
Jean Rhys
I am the only real truth I know.
Jean Rhys
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
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
Even the one moment that you thought was your eternity fades out and is forgotten and dies.
Jean Rhys
She haunted him, as an ungenerous action haunts one.
Jean Rhys
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
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.
Jean Rhys
I've been so ridiculous all my life that a little bit more or a little bit less hardly matters now.
Jean Rhys
...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
The musty smell, the bugs, the lonliness, this room, which is part of the street outside-this is all I want from life.
Jean Rhys
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
She’ll have no lover, for I don’t want her and she’ll see no other.
Jean Rhys
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