Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Jean Rhys
Age: 88 †
Born: 1890
Born: August 24
Died: 1979
Died: May 14
Novelist
Writer
Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams
Ella Rees Williams
Sorts
Important
Substance
Things
Instance
Realized
Illusion
Shadow
Value
Values

More quotes by Jean Rhys

Image
Life if curious when reduced to its essentials
Jean Rhys
Image
Soon he'll come in again and kiss me, but differently. He'll be different and so I'll be different. It'll be different. I thought, 'It'll be different, different. It must be different.
Jean Rhys
Image
I found when I was a child that if I put the hurt into words, it would go.
Jean Rhys
Image
Not that she objected to solitude. Quite the contrary. She had books, thank Heaven, quantities of books. All sorts of books.
Jean Rhys
Image
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
Image
It is strange how sad it can be - sunlight in the afternoon, don't you think?
Jean Rhys
Image
I sit at my window and the words fly past me like birds — with God's help I catch some.
Jean Rhys
Image
It's so easy to make a person who hasn't got anything seem wrong.
Jean Rhys
Image
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
Image
Even the one moment that you thought was your eternity fades out and is forgotten and dies.
Jean Rhys
Image
She haunted him, as an ungenerous action haunts one.
Jean Rhys
Image
I want more of this feeling - fire and wings.
Jean Rhys
Image
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
Image
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
Image
before I could read, almost a baby, I imagined that God, this strange thing or person I heard about, was a book.
Jean Rhys
Image
And then the days came when I was alone.
Jean Rhys
Image
I didn't know, I didn't know, I didn't know.
Jean Rhys
Image
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
Image
I have arranged my little life.
Jean Rhys
Image
And what does anyone know about traitors, or why Judas did what he did?
Jean Rhys