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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
Write
Writing
Think
Thinking
Choose
Rather
Happy

More quotes by 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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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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Quite like old times,' the room says.
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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I am the only real truth I know.
Jean Rhys
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She haunted him, as an ungenerous action haunts one.
Jean Rhys
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Life if curious when reduced to its essentials
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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I have arranged my little life.
Jean Rhys
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And what does anyone know about traitors, or why Judas did what he did?
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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No past to make us sentimental, no future to embarrass us...a difficult moment when you are out of practice - a moment that makes you go cold, cold and wary.
Jean Rhys
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But they never last, the golden days. And it can be sad, the sun in the afternoon, can't it? Yes, it can be sad, the afternoon sun, sad and frightening.
Jean Rhys
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There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about.
Jean Rhys
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It was the darkness that got you. It was heavy darkness, greasy and compelling. It made walls round you, and shut you in so that you felt like you could not breathe.
Jean Rhys
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I've been so ridiculous all my life that a little bit more or a little bit less hardly matters now.
Jean Rhys
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I am sad, sad as a circus-lioness.
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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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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What you take to be hyprocrisy is sometimes a certain caution, sometimes genuine, though ponderous, childish, sometimes a mixture of both.
Jean Rhys