Jean Rhys Quotes - Page 3

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

And then the days came when I was alone.

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

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

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.

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.

I'm no use to anybody,' I say. 'I'm a cérébrale, can't you see that?' Thinking how funny a book would be, called 'Just a Cérébrale or You Can't Stop Me From Dreaming'. Only, of course, to be accepted as authentic, to carry any conviction, it would have to be written by a man. What a pity, what a pity!

Every word I say has chains round its ankles; every thought I think is weighted with heavy weights. Since I was born, hasn't every word I've said, every thought I've thought, everything I've done, been tied up, weighted, chained? And mind you, I know that with all this I don't succeed. Or I succeed in flashes only too damned well. ...But think how hard I try and how seldom I dare. Think - and have a bit of pity. That is, if you ever think, you apes, which I doubt.

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

Not that she objected to solitude. Quite the contrary. She had books, thank Heaven, quantities of books. All sorts of books.

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.

London is like a cold dark dream sometimes.

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.

And I saw that all my life I had known that this was going to happen, and that I'd been afraid for a long time, I'd been afraid for a long time. There's fear, of course, with everybody. But now it had grown, it had grown gigantic; it filled me and it filled the whole world.

She’ll have no lover, for I don’t want her and she’ll see no other.

I like shape very much. A novel has to have shape, and life doesn't have any.

It is strange how sad it can be - sunlight in the afternoon, don't you think?

Even the one moment that you thought was your eternity fades out and is forgotten and dies.