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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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Jean Rhys
Age: 88 †
Born: 1890
Born: August 24
Died: 1979
Died: May 14
Novelist
Writer
Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams
Ella Rees Williams
Writing
Think
Thinking
Choose
Rather
Happy
Write

More quotes by Jean Rhys

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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.
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The feeling of Sunday is the same everywhere, heavy, melancholy, standing still.
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Only the magic and the dream are true — all the rest's a lie.
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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.
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All of a writer that matters is in the book or books. It is idiotic to be curious about the person.
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And then the days came when I was alone.
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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.
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I sit at my window and the words fly past me like birds — with God's help I catch some.
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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.
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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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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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Life if curious when reduced to its essentials
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And what does anyone know about traitors, or why Judas did what he did?
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I want more of this feeling - fire and wings.
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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.
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Of course she had some pathetic illusions about herself or she would not be able to go on living.
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It is strange how sad it can be - sunlight in the afternoon, don't you think?
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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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
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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