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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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Jean Rhys
Age: 88 †
Born: 1890
Born: August 24
Died: 1979
Died: May 14
Novelist
Writer
Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams
Ella Rees Williams
Thing
Longer
Loved
Successful
Alone
Happy
Wish
Left
Beautiful

More quotes by Jean Rhys

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The woman had a humble, cringing manner. Of course, she had discovered that, having neither money nor virtue, she had better be humble if she knew what was good for her.
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He had discovered that people who allow themselves to be blown about by the winds of emotion and impulse are always unhappy people.
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I like shape very much. A novel has to have shape, and life doesn't have any.
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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.
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I have arranged my little life.
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She haunted him, as an ungenerous action haunts one.
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Life if curious when reduced to its essentials
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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.
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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.
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Of course she had some pathetic illusions about herself or she would not be able to go on living.
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I've been so ridiculous all my life that a little bit more or a little bit less hardly matters now.
Jean Rhys
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The musty smell, the bugs, the lonliness, this room, which is part of the street outside-this is all I want from life.
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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.
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I sit at my window and the words fly past me like birds — with God's help I catch some.
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And then the days came when I was alone.
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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.
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I want more of this feeling - fire and wings.
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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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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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