Top 120 Jean Rhys Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “What I see is nothing – I want what it hides – that is not nothing.”

— Jean Rhys

52. “Something came out from my heart into my throat and then into my eyes.”

— Jean Rhys

53. “She lifted her eyes. Blank, lovely eyes. Mad eyes. A mad girl.”

— Jean Rhys

54. “The last time you were happy about nothing; the first time you were afraid about nothing. Which came first?”

— Jean Rhys

55. “There is no looking-glass here and I don’t know what I am like now. I remember watching myself brush my hair and how my eyes looked back at me. The girl I saw was myself yet not quite myself. Long ago when I was a child and very lonely I tried to kiss her. But the glass was between us – hard, cold and misted over with my breath. Now they have taken everything away. What am I doing in this place and who am I?”

— Jean Rhys

56. “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.”

— Jean Rhys

57. “There is no doubt that running away on a fresh, blue morning can be exhilarating.”

— Jean Rhys

58. “Even the one moment that you thought was your eternity fades out and is forgotten and dies.”

— Jean Rhys

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

— Jean Rhys

60. “Cold – cold as truth, cold as life. No, nothing can be as cold as life.”

— Jean Rhys

61. “Rain, forever raining. Drown me in sleep. And soon.”

— Jean Rhys

62. “I have been too unhappy, I thought, it cannot last, being so unhappy, it would kill you.”

— Jean Rhys

63. “It is strange how sad it can be – sunlight in the afternoon, don’t you think?”

— Jean Rhys

64. “Every word I say has chains round its ankles; every thought I think is weighted with heavy weights.”

— Jean Rhys

65. “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

66. “I thought if I told no one it might not be true.”

— Jean Rhys

67. “Life if curious when reduced to its essentials.”

— Jean Rhys

68. “I’ve had enough of these streets that sweat a cold, yellow slime, of hostile people, of crying myself to sleep every night. I’ve had enough of thinking, enough of remembering.”

— Jean Rhys

69. “After all this, what happened? What happened was that, as soon as I had the slightest chance of a place to hide in, I crept into it and hid. Well, sometimes it’s a fine day isn’t it? Sometimes the skies are blue. Sometimes the air is light, easy to breathe. And there is always tomorrow...”

— Jean Rhys

70. “Some must cry so that others may be able to laugh the more heartily. Sacrifices are necessary...”

— Jean Rhys

71. “I often want to cry. That is the only advantage women have over men – at least they can cry.”

— Jean Rhys

72. “The rumble of the life outside was like the sound of the sea which was rising gradually around her.”

— Jean Rhys

73. “When you insult or injure the unfortunate or the unhappy, you insult Christ Himself and He will not forget, for they are His chosen ones.”

— Jean Rhys

74. “A room is, after all, a place where you hide from the wolves. That’s all any room is.”

— Jean Rhys

75. “The woman had a humble, cringing manner. Of course, she had discovered that, having neither money nor virtue, she had better be humble if she knew what was good for her.”

— Jean Rhys

76. “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.”

— Jean Rhys

77. “I’ve been so ridiculous all my life that a little bit more or a little bit less hardly matters now.”

— Jean Rhys

78. “If this is a sad story, don’t tell it to me tonight.’‘It is not sad,’ she said. ‘Only some things happen and are there for always even though you forget why or when.”

— Jean Rhys

79. “I try, but they always see through me. The passages will never lead anywhere, the doors will always be shut.”

— Jean Rhys

80. “Sometimes the Earth trembles; sometimes you can feel it breathe.”

— Jean Rhys

81. “If all good, respectable people had one face, I’d spit in it.”

— Jean Rhys

82. “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.”

— Jean Rhys

83. “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.”

— Jean Rhys

84. “Lies are never forgotten, they go on and they grow.”

— Jean Rhys

85. “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

86. “He had discovered that people who allow themselves to be blown about by the winds of emotion and impulse are always unhappy people.”

— Jean Rhys

87. “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

88. “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.”

— Jean Rhys

89. “Why did you make me want to live? Why did you do that to me?”

— Jean Rhys

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

— Jean Rhys

91. “When he talked his eyes went away from mine and then he forced himself to look straight at me and he began to explain and I knew that he felt very strange with me and that he hated me, and it was funny sitting there and talking like that, knowing he hated me.”

— Jean Rhys

92. “I must remember about chandeliers and dancing, about swans and roses and snow.”

— Jean Rhys

93. “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

94. “Now at last I know why I was brought here and what I have to do.”

— Jean Rhys

95. “Do you think that too,” she said, “that I have slept too long in the moonlight?”

— Jean Rhys

96. “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.”

— Jean Rhys

97. “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.”

— Jean Rhys

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

— Jean Rhys

99. “Wasn’t it quite difficult being a wicked girl? Even more difficult than being a good one?”

— Jean Rhys

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

— Jean Rhys