Jean Rhys
Jean Rhys
Jean Rhys, CBE, born Ella Gwendolyn Rees Williams, was a mid-20th-century novelist who was born and grew up in the Caribbean island of Dominica, though she was mainly resident in England from the age of 16. She is best known for her novel Wide Sargasso Sea, written as a prequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth24 August 1894
dream book men
I'm no use to anybody,' I say. 'I'm a cérébrale, can't you see that?' Thinking how funny a book would be, called 'Just a Cérébrale or You Can't Stop Me From Dreaming'. Only, of course, to be accepted as authentic, to carry any conviction, it would have to be written by a man. What a pity, what a pity!
lasts knows
Now at last I know why I was brought here and what I have to do.
night littles dinner
I have been here five days. I have decided on a place to eat in at midday, a place to eat in at night, a place to have my drink in after dinner. I have arranged my little life.
long house shadow
I watched her die many times. In my way, not in hers. In sunlight, in shadow, by moonlight, by candlelight. In the long afternoons when the house was empty. Only the sun was there to keep us company. We shut him out. And why not? Very soon she was as eager for what's called loving as I was - more lost and drowned afterwards.
down-and awful bleeding
Love was a terrible thing. You poisoned it and stabbed at it and knocked it down into the mud - well down - and it got up and staggered on, bleeding and muddy and awful. Like - like Rasputin.
easy persons seems
It's so easy to make a person who hasn't got anything seem wrong.
wall darkness like-you
It was the darkness that got you. It was heavy darkness, greasy and compelling. It made walls round you, and shut you in so that you felt like you could not breathe.
unhappiness strangeness
...morbidly, attracted him to strangeness, to recklessnesss, even unhappiness.
eagles wings broken
Yes, I am sad, sad as a circus-lioness, sad as an eagle without wings, sad as a violin with only one string and that one broken, sad as a woman who is growing old. Sad, sad, sad...
humble humility virtue
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.
mixtures sometimes genuine
What you take to be hyprocrisy is sometimes a certain caution, sometimes genuine, though ponderous, childish, sometimes a mixture of both.
struggle views humans
Human beings are struggling, and so they are egoists. But it's wrong to say that they are wholy cruel - it's a deformed view.
dream dark london
London is like a cold dark dream sometimes.
littles
I have arranged my little life.