Jean Rhys quotes

Jean Rhys was an English novelist best known for her novel "Wide Sargasso Sea". Her work often explores themes of identity, displacement, and the experiences of women in a colonial world. She is celebrated for her distinctive voice and psychological depth in modern literature. Here are 44 of her quotes:

Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important it finds homes for us everywhere. (Jean Rhys)
I like shape very much. A novel has to have shape, and life doesn't have any. View quote
Jean Rhys
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... View quote
Jean Rhys
Only the magic and the dream are true - all the rest's a lie. View quote
Jean Rhys
Not that she objected to solitude. Quite the contrary. She had books, thank Heaven, quantities of books. All sorts of books. View quote
Jean Rhys
I've been so ridiculous all my life that a little bit more or a little bit less hardly matters now. View quote
Jean Rhys
A room is, after all, a place where you hide from the wolves. That's all any room is. View quote
Jean Rhys
Now I no longer wish to be loved, beautiful, happy or successful. I want one thing and one thing only - to be left alone. View quote
Jean Rhys
There is always the other side, always. View quote
Jean Rhys
Of course she had some pathetic illusions about herself or she would not be able to go on living. View quote
Jean Rhys
I want more of this feeling - fire and wings. (Jean Rhys)
There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about. View quote
Jean Rhys
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. View quote
Jean Rhys
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. View quote
Jean Rhys
... 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. View quote
Jean Rhys
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. View quote
Jean Rhys
Have all beautiful things sad destinies? View quote
Jean Rhys
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. View quote
Jean Rhys
Today I must be very careful, today I have left my armor at home. View quote
Jean Rhys
Life if curious when reduced to its essentials. View quote
Jean Rhys
Age seldom arrives smoothly or quickly. It's more often a succession of jerks. (Jean Rhys)
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. View quote
Jean Rhys
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. View quote
Jean Rhys
They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did. View quote
Jean Rhys
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. View quote
Jean Rhys