Quotes from Jean Rhys

Have all beautiful things sad destinies?

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.

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.

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

There is always another side, always.

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...

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

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

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.

You imagine the carefully pruned, shaped thing that is presented to you is truth. That is just what it isn't. The truth is improbable, the truth is fantastic; it's in what you think is a distorting mirror that you see the truth.

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

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

that expression you get in your eyes when you are very tired and everything is like a dream and you are starting to know what things are like underneath what people say they are.

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.

I am sad, sad as a circus-lioness.

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.

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.

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.

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

Life if curious when reduced to its essentials

I have arranged my little life.

I have been here five days. I have decided on a place to eat in at midday, a place to eat in at night, a place to have my drink in after dinner. I have arranged my little life.

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.

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