Quote

I am sad, sad as a circus-lioness.

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
Lioness
Circus

More quotes by Jean Rhys

Image
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
Image
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.
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 like shape very much. A novel has to have shape, and life doesn't have any.
Jean Rhys
Image
She’ll have no lover, for I don’t want her and she’ll see no other.
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
...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
Image
There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about.
Jean Rhys
Image
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
Image
Of course she had some pathetic illusions about herself or she would not be able to go on living.
Jean Rhys
Image
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
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
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
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
Image
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
Image
As it was in the beginning, ... is now, and ever shall be, world without end.
Jean Rhys
Image
She haunted him, as an ungenerous action haunts one.
Jean Rhys
Image
Quite like old times,' the room says.
Jean Rhys
Image
And then the days came when I was alone.
Jean Rhys
Image
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