Explore Quotes by Jean Rhys

My life, which seems so simple and monotonous, is really a complicated affair of cafés where they like me and cafés where they don't, streets that are friendly, streets that aren't, rooms where I might be happy, rooms where I shall never be, looking-glasses I look nice in, looking-glasses I don't, dresses that will be lucky, dresses that won't, and so on.

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!

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.

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.

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

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 would never be part of anything. I would never really belong anywhere, and I knew it, and all my life would be the same, trying to belong, and failing. Always something would go wrong. I am a stranger and I always will be, and after all I didn’t really care.

...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.

Would you like a whiskey?' I say. 'I've got some.' (That's original. I bet nobody's ever thought of that way of bridging the gap before.)

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

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

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.

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

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

I hated the mountains and the hills, the rivers and the rain. I hated the sunsets of whatever colour, I hated its beauty and its magic and the secret I would never know. I hated its indifference and the cruelty which was part of its loveliness. Above all I hated her. For she belonged to the magic and the loveliness. She had left me thirsty and all my life would be thirst and longing for what I had lost before I found it.

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.

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

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

She haunted him, as an ungenerous action haunts one.

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

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