Quotes from Jean Rhys

The rumble of the life outside was like the sound of the sea which was rising gradually around her.

Quite like old times,' the room says.

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

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

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

I have tried," I said, "but he does not believe me. It is too late for that now" (it is always too late for truth, I thought).

The musty smell, the bugs, the lonliness, this room, which is part of the street outside-this is all I want from life.

I am the only real truth I know.

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

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

Do you think that too, " she said, "that I have slept too long in the moonlight?

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

Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere.

For the first time she had dimly realized that only the hopeless are starkly sincere and that only the unhappy can either give or take sympathy--even some of the bitter and dangerous voluptuousness of misery.

As soon as I turned the key I saw it hanging, the color of fire and sunset. the colour of flamboyant flowers. 'If you are buried under a flamboyant tree, ' I said, 'your soul is lifted up when it flowers. Everyone wants that.' She shook her head but she did not move or touch me.

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.

I want more of this feeling - fire and wings.

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

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

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.

Your red dress,' she said, and laughed. But I looked at the dress on the floor and it was as if the fire had spread across the room. It was beautiful and it reminded me of something I must do. I will remember I thought. I will remember quite soon now.

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.

If I was bound for hell, let it be hell. No more false heavens. No more damned magic.

It's so easy to make a person who hasn't got anything seem wrong.