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I am sad, sad as a circus-lioness.

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
Lioness
Circus

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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
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And what does anyone know about traitors, or why Judas did what he did?
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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.
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If I was bound for hell, let it be hell. No more false heaven. No more damned magic.
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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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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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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.
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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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It is strange how sad it can be - sunlight in the afternoon, don't you think?
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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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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.
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I didn't know, I didn't know, I didn't know.
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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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She could give herself up to the written word as naturally as a good dancer to music or a fine swimmer to water. The only difficulty was that after finishing the last sentence she was left with a feeling at once hollow and uncomfortably full. Exactly like indigestion.
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