Jean Rhys Quotes

Yes, I am sad, sad as a circus-lioness, sad as an eagle without wings, sad as a violin with only one string and that one broken, sad as a woman who is growing old. Sad, sad, sad.

The feeling of Sunday is the same everywhere, heavy, melancholy, standing still.

A room is, after all, a place where you hide from the wolves. That's all any room is.

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.

I am sad, sad as a circus-lioness.

I am the only real truth I know.

Now I no longer wish to be loved, beautiful, happy or successful. I want one thing and one thing only - to be left alone.

I've been so ridiculous all my life that a little bit more or a little bit less hardly matters now.

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.

We can't all be happy, we can't all be rich, we can't all be lucky - and it would be so much less fun if we were... There must be the dark background to show up the bright colours.

Age seldom arrives smoothly or quickly. It's more often a succession of jerks.

Today I must be very careful, today I have left my armor at home.

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.

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.

Have all beautiful things sad destinies?

He had discovered that people who allow themselves to be blown about by the winds of emotion and impulse are always unhappy people.

Every word I say has chains round its ankles; every thought I think is weighted with heavy weights.

Only the magic and the dream are true — all the rest's a lie.

Of course she had some pathetic illusions about herself or she would not be able to go on living.

...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.

A room? A nice room? A beautiful room? A beautiful room with bath? Swing high, swing low, swing to and fro...This happened and that happened... And then the days came and I was alone.

The last time you were happy about nothing; the first time you were afraid about nothing. Which came first?

Everything tender and melancholy - as life is sometimes, just for one moment.

Blot out the moon, Pull down the stars. Love in the dark, for we're for the dark So soon, so soon.

When I think about it, if I had to choose, I'd rather be happy than write.

I am empty of everything. I am empty of everything but the thin, frail ghosts in my room.

The perpetual hunger to be beautiful and that thirst to be loved which is the real curse of Eve.

I often want to cry. That is the only advantage women have over men — at least they can cry.

There is always the other side, always.

I want more of this feeling - fire and wings.

And what does anyone know about traitors, or why Judas did what he did?

And then the days came when I was alone.

There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about.

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

I didn't know, I didn't know, I didn't know.

Sometimes the Earth trembles; sometimes you can feel it breathe.

Something in her brain that still remained calm told her that she was doing a very foolish thing indeed.

She had left me thirsty and all my life would be thirst and longing for what I had lost before I found it.

If all good, respectable people had one face, I'd spit in it.

I have arranged my little life.

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.

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.

Life if curious when reduced to its essentials

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.

Some must cry so that others may be able to laugh the more heartily. Sacrifices are necessary.

London is like a cold dark dream sometimes.

Now at last I know why I was brought here and what I have to do.

As it was in the beginning, ... is now, and ever shall be, world without end.

I sit at my window and the words fly past me like birds — with God's help I catch some.

Something came out from my heart into my throat and then into my eyes.