Quote

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

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
Help
Words
Helping
Past
Birds
Like
Catch
Bird
Window

More quotes by Jean Rhys

Image
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
Image
I am the only real truth I know.
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
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.
Jean Rhys
Image
I like shape very much. A novel has to have shape, and life doesn't have any.
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
Quite like old times,' the room says.
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
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
Image
I found when I was a child that if I put the hurt into words, it would go.
Jean Rhys
Image
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
Image
I have arranged my little life.
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
I want more of this feeling - fire and wings.
Jean Rhys
Image
I didn't know, I didn't know, I didn't know.
Jean Rhys
Image
What you take to be hyprocrisy is sometimes a certain caution, sometimes genuine, though ponderous, childish, sometimes a mixture of both.
Jean Rhys
Image
Cold - cold as truth, cold as life. No, nothing can be as cold as life.
Jean Rhys
Image
She’ll have no lover, for I don’t want her and she’ll see no other.
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