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
Life
Weather
Cold
Truth
Nothing

More quotes by Jean Rhys

Image
I found when I was a child that if I put the hurt into words, it would go.
Jean Rhys
Image
Quite like old times,' the room says.
Jean Rhys
Image
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
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
Of course she had some pathetic illusions about herself or she would not be able to go on living.
Jean Rhys
Image
You can pretend for a long time, but one day it all falls away and you are alone. We are alone in the most beautiful place in the world.
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
There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about.
Jean Rhys
Image
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.
Jean Rhys
Image
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
Image
Only the magic and the dream are true — all the rest's a lie.
Jean Rhys
Image
The feeling of Sunday is the same everywhere, heavy, melancholy, standing still.
Jean Rhys
Image
Even the one moment that you thought was your eternity fades out and is forgotten and dies.
Jean Rhys
Image
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
Image
I didn't know, I didn't know, I didn't know.
Jean Rhys
Image
And then the days came when I was alone.
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
If I was bound for hell, let it be hell. No more false heaven. No more damned magic.
Jean Rhys
Image
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
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