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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
Damned
Bound
Bounds
False
Magic
Hell
Heaven

More quotes by 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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I am the only real truth I know.
Jean Rhys
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It's so easy to make a person who hasn't got anything seem wrong.
Jean Rhys
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There is no doubt that running away on a fresh, blue morning can be exhilarating.
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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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
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...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
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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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What you take to be hyprocrisy is sometimes a certain caution, sometimes genuine, though ponderous, childish, sometimes a mixture of both.
Jean Rhys
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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.
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.
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 feeling of Sunday is the same everywhere, heavy, melancholy, standing still.
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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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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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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Even the one moment that you thought was your eternity fades out and is forgotten and dies.
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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Cold - cold as truth, cold as life. No, nothing can be as cold as life.
Jean Rhys
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Quite like old times,' the room says.
Jean Rhys