Vain, silly creature. Made for loving? Yes, but she’ll have no lover, for I don’t want her and she’ll see no other.
Why did you make me want to live? Why did you do that to me?
I try, but they always see through me. The passages will never lead anywhere, the doors will always be shut.
Let’s say that you have this mystical right to cut my legs off. But the right to ridicule me afterwards because I am a cripple – no, that I think you haven’t got. And that’s the right you hold most dearly, isn’t it? You must be able to despise the people you exploit.
Well, that was the end of me, the real end. Two pound ten every Tuesday and a room of the Gray’s Inn Road. Saved, rescued and with my place to hide in – what more did I want? I crept in and hid. The lid of the coffin shut down with a bang. Now I no longer wish to be loved, beautiful, happy or successful. I want one thing and one thing only – to be left alone. No more pawings, no more pryings – leave me alone.
These people all fling themselves at me. Because I am uneasy and sad they all fling themselves at me larger than life. But I can put my arm up to avoid the impact and they slide gently to the ground. Individualists, completely wrapped up in themselves, thank God. It’s the extrovert, prancing around, dying for a bit of fun – that’s the person you’ve got to be wary of.
Our garden was large and beautiful as that garden in the Bible – the tree of life grew there. But it had gone wild. The paths were overgrown and a smell of dead flowers mixed with the fresh living smell. Underneath the tree ferns, tall as forest tree ferns, the light was green.
I’d planned to die at thirty, and then I’d push it on ten years, forty, and then fifty, You always push it on. And then you go on and on and on. It’s difficult. Too much trouble. I’ve thought about death a great deal. One day in the snow I felt so tired. I thought, ‘Damn it, I’ll sit down. I can’t go on. I’m tired of living here in the snow and ice.’ So I sat down on the ground. But it was so cold I got up. Oh yes, I used to try to imagine death, but I always come up against a wall.
I can remember every second of that morning, if I shut my eyes I can see the deep blue colour of the sky and the mango leaves, the pink and red hibiscus, the yellow handkerchief she wore around her head, tied in the Martinique fashion with the sharp points in front, but now I see everything still, fixed for ever like the colours in a stained-glass window. Only the clouds move. It was wrapped in a leaf, what she had given me, and I felt it cool and smooth against my skin.
I had started out in life trusting everyone and now I trusted no one. So I had a few acquaintances and no close friends. It was perhaps in reaction against the inevitable loneliness of my life that I’d find myself doing bold, risky, even outrageous things without hesitation or surprise. I was usually disappointed in these adventures and they didn’t have much effect on me, good or bad, but I never quite lost the hope of something better or different.
Nothing left but hopelessness.′ Say die and I will die. Say die and watch me die.
The devil prince of this world, but this world don’t last so long for mortal man.
Your husband certainly love money,′ she said. ‘That is no lie Money have pretty face for everybody, but for that man money pretty like pretty self, he can’t see nothing else.
Everything is too much, I felt as I rode wearily after her. Too much blue, too much purple, too much green. The flowers too red, the mountains too high, the hills too near.
Of course, as soon as a thing has happened it isn’t fantastic any longer, it’s inevitable. The inevitable is what you’re doing or have done. The fantastic is simply what you didn’t do.
Wasn’t it quite difficult being a wicked girl? Even more difficult than being a good one?
Anything you like; anything I like... No past to make us sentimental, no future to embarrass us.
Only the magic and the dream are true – all the rest’s a lie. Let it go. Here is the secret. Here.
Almost any book was better than life, Audrey thought. Or rather, life as she was living it. Of course, life would soon change, open out, become quite different. You couldn’t go on if you didn’t hope that, could you? But for the time being there was no doubt that it was pleasant to get away from it. And books could take her away.
The really important difficulty is the place, room, cave, cabin to write in. – Jean Rhys.