Quotes from Jean Rhys

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

morbidly, attracted him to strangeness, to recklessnesss, even unhappiness.

When I saw him looking up like that I knew that I loved him, and that it was for always. It was as if my heart turned over, and I knew that it was for always. It's a strange feeling - when you know quite certainly in yourself that something is for always . It's like what death must be.

You are walking along a road peacefully. You trip. You fall into blackness. That's the past - or perhaps the future. And you know that there is no past, no future, there is only this blackness, changing faintly, slowly, but always the same.

And I'll look back at him because I shan't be able to help it, remembering about being young, and about being made love to and making love, about pain and dancing and not being afraid of death, about all music I've ever loved, and every time I've been happy.

She lifted her eyes. Blank, lovely eyes. Mad eyes. A mad girl.

I have arranged my little life.

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

Lies are never forgotten, they go on and they grow

If this is a sad story, don't tell it to me tonight.''It is not sad,' she said. 'Only some things happen and are there for always even though you forget why or when.

Saved, rescued, but not quite so good as new...

I must remember about chandeliers and dancing, about swans and roses and snow.

Everything in their whole bloody world is a cliché. Everything is born out of a cliché, rests on a cliché, survives by a cliché. And they believe in the clichés - there's no hope.

But they left their treasure, gold and more gold. Some of it is found- but the finders never tell, because you see they'd only get one-third then: that's the law of treasure. They want it all, so never speak of it.

Rain, forever raining. Drown me in sleep. And soon.

The feeling of Sunday is the same everywhere, heavy, melancholy, standing still. Like when they say, As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.

You surpise me, because people nearly always force you to ask, don't they?

As for her, I'd forgotten her for the moment. So I shall never understand why, suddenly, bewilderingly, I was certain that everything I had imagined to be truth was false. False. Only the magic and the dream are true—all the rest's a lie. Let it go. Here is the secret. Here.

May you tear each other to bits, you damned hyenas, and the quicker the better. Let it be destroyed. Let it happen. Let it end, this cold insanity.

Only seven or eight, and yet she knew so exactly how to be cruel and who it was safe to be cruel to. One must admire Nature..

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

As soon as you have reached this heaven of indifference, you are pulled out of it. From your heaven you have to go back to hell. When you are dead to the world, the world often rescues you, if only to make a figure of fun out of you.

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.

Unhappily children do hurt flies