Quote

I sit at my window and the words fly past me like birds — with God's help I catch some.

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
Bird
Window
Help
Words
Helping
Past
Like
Birds
Catch

More quotes by Jean Rhys

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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.
Jean Rhys
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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
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When you are a child you are yourself and you know and see everything prophetically. And then suddenly something happens and you stop being yourself you become what others force you to be. You lose your wisdom and your soul.
Jean Rhys
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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.
Jean Rhys
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It was like letting go and falling back into water and seeing yourself grinning up through the water, your face like a mask, and seeing the bubbles coming up as if you were trying to speak from under the water. And how do you know what it's like to try to speak from under water when you're drowned?
Jean Rhys
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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
Jean Rhys
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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.
Jean Rhys
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Human beings are struggling, and so they are egoists. But it's wrong to say that they are wholy cruel - it's a deformed view.
Jean Rhys
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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.
Jean Rhys
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I am sad, sad as a circus-lioness.
Jean Rhys
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I am the only real truth I know.
Jean Rhys
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I found when I was a child that if I put the hurt into words, it would go.
Jean Rhys
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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
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Not that she objected to solitude. Quite the contrary. She had books, thank Heaven, quantities of books. All sorts of books.
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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Stephan was secretive and a liar, but he was a very gentle and expert lover. She was the petted, cherished child, the desired mistress, the worshipped, perfumed goddess. She was all these things to Stephan - or so he made her believe.
Jean Rhys
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If I was bound for hell, let it be hell. No more false heaven. No more damned magic.
Jean Rhys
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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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I have arranged my little life.
Jean Rhys
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The rumble of the life outside was like the sound of the sea which was rising gradually around her.
Jean Rhys