Jean Rhys Quotes

Have all beautiful things sad destinies?

Have all beautiful things sad destinies?

Jean Rhys

The maid came in to light up and soon it would be time to go upstairs and change for dinner. I thought this woman one of the most fascinating I had ever seen. She had a long thin face, dead white, or...

The maid came in to light up and soon it would be time to go upstairs and change for dinner. I thought this woman one of the most fascinating I had ever seen. She had a long thin face, dead white, or...

Jean Rhys

Tags: blue eyes, maid

About Author

Jean Rhys, ( REESS; born Ella Gwendoline Rees Williams; 24 August 1890 – 14 May 1979) was a British novelist who was born and grew up in the Caribbean island of Dominica. From the age of 16, she mainly resided in England, where she was sent for her education. She is best known for her novel Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), written as a prequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. In 1978, she was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for her writing.

Jean Rhys Quotes

Have all beautiful things sad destinies?

The maid came in to light up and soon it would be time to go upstairs and change for dinner. I thought this woman one of the most fascinating I had ever seen. She had a long thin face, dead white, or...

About Author

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 wo...

You want to know what I'm afraid of? All right, I'll tell you. I'm afraid of men - yes, I'm very much afraid of men. And I'm even more afraid of women. And I'm very much afraid of the whole bloody hum...

And there I lie in these damned bandages for a week. And there he lies, swathed up too, like a little mummy. And never crying.But now I like raking him in my arms and looking at him. A lovely forehead...

Do you think that too," she said, "that I have slept too long in the moonlight?

No past to make us sentimental, no future to embarrass us...a difficult moment when you are out of practice - a moment that makes you go cold, cold and wary.

There is a porter at the door and at the reception-desk a grey-haired woman and a sleek young man.'I want a room for tonight.''A room? A room with bath?'I am still feeling ill and giddy. I say confide...

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 l...

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 u...

May you tear each other to bits, you damned hyenas, and the quicker the better. Let it be destroyed. Let it happen. Let it end, this cold insanity.

There is always another side, always.

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....

Morbidly, attracted him to strangeness, to recklessnesss, even unhappiness.

If all good, respectable people had one face, I'd spit in it.

And I’ll look back at him because I shan’t be able to help it, remembering about being young, and about being made love to and making love, about pain and dancing and not being afraid of death, about...

It's funny when you feel as if you don't want anything more in your life except to sleep, or else to lie without moving. That's when you can hear time sliding past you, like water running.

Stephan was secretive and a liar, but he was a very gentle and expert lover. She was the petted, cherished child, the desired mistress, the worshipped, perfumed goddess. She was all these things to St...

Why are you sad?

The musty smell, the bugs, the lonliness, this room, which is part of the street outside-this is all I want from life.