Quote

Cold - cold as truth, cold as life. No, nothing can be as cold as life.

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
Weather
Cold
Truth
Nothing
Life

More quotes by Jean Rhys

Image
All of a writer that matters is in the book or books. It is idiotic to be curious about the person.
Jean Rhys
Image
She’ll have no lover, for I don’t want her and she’ll see no other.
Jean Rhys
Image
She haunted him, as an ungenerous action haunts one.
Jean Rhys
Image
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.
Jean Rhys
Image
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
Image
I found when I was a child that if I put the hurt into words, it would go.
Jean Rhys
Image
Not that she objected to solitude. Quite the contrary. She had books, thank Heaven, quantities of books. All sorts of books.
Jean Rhys
Image
I didn't know, I didn't know, I didn't know.
Jean Rhys
Image
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
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
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
Image
If I was bound for hell, let it be hell. No more false heaven. No more damned magic.
Jean Rhys
Image
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
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 have arranged my little life.
Jean Rhys
Image
before I could read, almost a baby, I imagined that God, this strange thing or person I heard about, was a book.
Jean Rhys
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I like shape very much. A novel has to have shape, and life doesn't have any.
Jean Rhys
Image
I've been so ridiculous all my life that a little bit more or a little bit less hardly matters now.
Jean Rhys