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.
Jean RhysRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote illustrates how overwhelming feelings of despair can suffocate one's spirit and sense of freedom.
In this quote, Jean Rhys vividly describes the feeling of being trapped by darkness, which symbolizes despair, depression, or difficult emotions. The metaphor of heavy darkness as something greasy and compelling suggests that such feelings can be pervasive, inescapable, and stifling, limiting one’s ability to see a way out or to breathe freely. It highlights the powerful grip that negative emotions can have on a person’s life, making it difficult to find solace or clarity.
Themes
DarknessDespairEmotionsFreedomSuffocation
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about mental health awareness during a seminar.
More from Jean Rhys
All quotes →If I was bound for hell, let it be hell. No more false heaven. No more damned magic.
Jean RhysRead
The musty smell, the bugs, the lonliness, this room, which is part of the street outside-this is all I want from life.
Jean RhysRead
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.
Jean RhysRead
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.
Jean RhysRead
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.
Jean RhysRead
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