Jean Rhys Quotes

As soon as I turned the key I saw it hanging, the color of fire and sunset. the colour of flamboyant flowers. ‘If you are buried under a flamboyant tree, ‘ I said, ‘your soul is lifted up when it flowers. Everyone wants that.’She shook her head but she did not move or touch me.

~ Jean Rhys

When I was out on the battlements it was cool and I could hardly hear them. I sat there quietly. I don't know how long I sat. Then I turned round and saw the sky. It was red and all my life was in it.

~ Jean Rhys

The house was burning, the yellow-red sky was like the sunset...Nothing would be left, the golden ferns and the silver ferns, the orchids, the ginger lilies and the roses...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

And what does anyone know about traitors, or why Judas did what he did?

~ Jean Rhys

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.

~ Jean Rhys

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

~ Jean Rhys

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

~ Jean Rhys

I am empty of everything. I am empty of everything but the thin, frail ghosts in my room.

~ 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

But in the daytime it was all right. And when you'd had a drink you knew it was the best way to live in the world because anything might happen. I don't know how people live when they know exactly what's going to happen to them each day.

~ Jean Rhys

It's funny, he said, have you ever thought that a girl's clothes cost more than the girl inside them?

~ Jean Rhys

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

I am the only real truth I know.

~ Jean Rhys

Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere.

~ Jean Rhys