Jean Rhys

Novelist

1894-08-24

Quotes by Jean Rhys

• Well, let's argue this out, Mr Blank. You, who represent Society, have the right to pay me four hundred francs a month. That's my market value, for I am an inefficient member of Society, slow in the uptake, uncertain, slightly damaged in the fray, there's no denying it. So you have the right to pay me four hundred francs a month, to lodge me in a small, dark room, to clothe me shabbily, to harass me with worry and monotony and unsatisfied longings till you get me to the point when I blush at a look, cry at a word. 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. Isn't it so, Mr Blank? There must be the dark background to show up the bright colours. Some must cry so that the others may be able to laugh the more heartily.

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• I thought if I told no one it might not be true.

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• Anything you like; anything I like... No past to make us sentimental, no future to embarrass us

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• Have all beautiful things sad destinies?

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• Is it true,' she said, —that England is like a dream? Because one of my friends who married an Englishman wrote and told me so. She said this place London is like a cold dark dream sometimes. I want to wake up.'"Well', I answered annoyed, "that is precisely how your beautiful island seems to me, quite unreal and like a dream.'"But how can rivers and mountains and the sea be unreal?'"And how can millions of people, their houses and their streets be unreal?'"More easily,' she said, "much more easily. Yes a big city must be like a dream.

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• And I saw that all my life I had known that this was going to happen, and that I'd been afraid for a long time, I'd been afraid for a long time. There's fear, of course, with everybody. But now it had grown, it had grown gigantic; it filled me and it filled the whole world.

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• Not that she objected to solitude. Quite the contrary. She had books, thank Heaven, quantities of books. All sorts of books.

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• Lies are never forgotten, they go on and they grow

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about.

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• I like shape very much. A novel has to have shape, and life doesn't have any.

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• 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.

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• Is it true,' she said, —that England is like a dream? Because one of my friends who married an Englishman wrote and told me so. She said this place London is like a cold dark dream sometimes. I want to wake up.'"Well', I answered annoyed, "that is precisely how your beautiful island seems to me, quite unreal and like a dream.'"But how can rivers and mountains and the sea be unreal?'"And how can millions of people, their houses and their streets be unreal?'"More easily,' she said, "much more easily. Yes a big city must be like a dream.

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• I thought if I told no one it might not be true.

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• 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.

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• Lies are never forgotten, they go on and they grow

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• I like shape very much. A novel has to have shape, and life doesn't have any.

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