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.

— Jean Rhys

Jean Rhys Quotes

I hope that gay gentleman will be safe.

— Jean Rhys

I had had the job for three weeks. It was dreary. You couldn’t read; they didn’t like it. I would feel as if I were drugged, sitting there, watching those damned dolls, thinking what a success they would have made of their lives if they had been women. Satin skin, silk hair, velvet eyes, sawdust heart – all complete.

— Jean Rhys

Justice’, she said. ‘I’ve heard that word. It’s a cold word. I tried it out’, she said, still speaking in a low voice. ‘I wrote it down. I wrote it down several times and always it looked like a damn cold lie to me. There is no justice.

— Jean Rhys

That was when it was sad, when you lay awake at night and remembered things. That was when it was sad, when you stood by the bed and undressed, thinking, “When he kisses me, shivers run up my back. I am hopeless, resigned, utterly happy. Is that me? I am bad, not good any longer, bad. That has no meaning, absolutely none. Just words. But something about the darkness of the streets has a meaning.

— Jean Rhys

If I could choose I would rather be happy than write.

— Jean Rhys

Just you touch me once. You’ll soon see if I’m a damn coward like you are.

— Jean Rhys

Left alone, Miss Verney felt so old, lonely and helpless that she began to cry. No builder would tackle that shed, not for any price she could afford. But crying relieved her and she soon felt quite cheerful again. It was ridiculous to brood, she told herself.

— Jean Rhys

There is no control over memory.

— Jean Rhys

I have a lot of writing to do and not as much time as you’d think. I do it at night now and look a bit haggard afterwards.

— Jean Rhys

I prayed, but the words fell to the ground meaning nothing.

— Jean Rhys

A vague procession of towns all exactly alike, a vague procession of men also exactly alike. One can drift like that for a long time, she found, carefully hiding the fact that this wasn’t what one had expected of life. Not in the very least.

— Jean Rhys

There was a vase of flame-coloured tulips in the hall – surely the most graceful of flowers. Some thrust their heads forward like snakes, and some were very erect, stiff, virginal, rather prim. Some were dying, with curved grace in their death.

— Jean Rhys

The prayer ended, ‘May Almighty God defend us.’ And God who is indeed mysterious, who had made no sign when they burned Pierre as he slept – not a clap of thunder, not a flash of lighting – mysterious God heard Mr Mason at once and answered him. The yells stopped.

— Jean Rhys

She is Creole girl, and she have the sun in her. Tell the truth now. She don’t come to your house in this place England they tell me about, she don’t come to your beautiful house to beg you to marry with her. No, it’s you come all the long way to her house – it’s you beg her to marry. And she love you and she give you all she have. Now you say you don’t love her and you break her up. What you do with her money, eh?

— Jean Rhys

She found pleasure in memories, as an old woman might have done.

— Jean Rhys

The house was burning, the yellow-red sky was like sunset and I knew that I would never see Coulibri again. Nothing would be left, the golden ferns and the silver ferns, the orchids, the ginger lilies and the roses, the rocking-chairs and the blue sofa, the jasmine and the honeysuckle, and the picture of the Miller’s Daughter. When they had finished, there would be nothing left but blackened walls and the mounting stone. That was always left. That could not be stolen or burned.

— Jean Rhys

Well, there you are. It’s not that these things happen or even that one survives them, but what makes life strange is that they are forgotten. Even the one moment that you thought was your eternity fades out and is forgotten and dies. This is what makes life so droll – the way you forget and every day is a new day, and there’s hope for everybody, hooray...

— Jean Rhys

I was thinking, ‘I’m nineteen and I’ve got to go on living and living and living.

— Jean Rhys

I don’t say I don’t believe, I say I don’t know, I know what I see with my eyes and I never see it.

— Jean Rhys

I stopped going out; I stopped wanting to go out. That happens very easily. It’s as if you had always done that – lived in a few rooms and gone from one to the other.

— Jean Rhys
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