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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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Jean Rhys
Age: 88 †
Born: 1890
Born: August 24
Died: 1979
Died: May 14
Novelist
Writer
Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams
Ella Rees Williams
Shadow
Value
Values
Important
Sorts
Things
Substance
Instance
Realized
Illusion
More quotes by Jean Rhys
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
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
And what does anyone know about traitors, or why Judas did what he did?
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
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
She haunted him, as an ungenerous action haunts one.
Jean Rhys
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
Age seldom arrives smoothly or quickly. It's more often a succession of jerks.
Jean Rhys
What you take to be hyprocrisy is sometimes a certain caution, sometimes genuine, though ponderous, childish, sometimes a mixture of both.
Jean Rhys
The feeling of Sunday is the same everywhere, heavy, melancholy, standing still.
Jean Rhys
before I could read, almost a baby, I imagined that God, this strange thing or person I heard about, was a book.
Jean Rhys
We can't all be happy, we can't all be rich, we can't all be lucky - and it would be so much less fun if we were... There must be the dark background to show up the bright colours.
Jean Rhys
Only the magic and the dream are true — all the rest's a lie.
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
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
There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about.
Jean Rhys
I have arranged my little life.
Jean Rhys
I like shape very much. A novel has to have shape, and life doesn't have any.
Jean Rhys
Life if curious when reduced to its essentials
Jean Rhys
It is strange how sad it can be - sunlight in the afternoon, don't you think?
Jean Rhys
