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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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Jean Rhys
Age: 88 †
Born: 1890
Born: August 24
Died: 1979
Died: May 14
Novelist
Writer
Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams
Ella Rees Williams
Bound
Bounds
False
Magic
Hell
Heaven
Damned

More quotes by Jean Rhys

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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.
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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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Quite like old times,' the room says.
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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.
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There is no doubt that running away on a fresh, blue morning can be exhilarating.
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She haunted him, as an ungenerous action haunts one.
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I have arranged my little life.
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The feeling of Sunday is the same everywhere, heavy, melancholy, standing still.
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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.
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And then the days came when I was alone.
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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?
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The rumble of the life outside was like the sound of the sea which was rising gradually around her.
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Cold - cold as truth, cold as life. No, nothing can be as cold as life.
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Even the one moment that you thought was your eternity fades out and is forgotten and dies.
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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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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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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
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As it was in the beginning, ... is now, and ever shall be, world without end.
Jean Rhys
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Only the magic and the dream are true — all the rest's a lie.
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.
Jean Rhys