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 tired eye
that expression you get in your eyes when you are very tired and everything is like a dream and you are starting to know what things are like underneath what people say they are.
kissing kiss-me different
Soon he'll come in again and kiss me, but differently. He'll be different and so I'll be different. It'll be different. I thought, 'It'll be different, different. It must be different.
eye talking knowing
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.
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!
letting-go fall water
It was like letting go and falling back into water and seeing yourself grinning up through the water, your face like a mask, and seeing the bubbles coming up as if you were trying to speak from under the water. And how do you know what it's like to try to speak from under water when you're drowned?
looks down-and red
I took the red dress down and put it against myself. 'Does it make me look intemperate and unchaste?' I said.
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.
book writing matter
All of a writer that matters is in the book or books. It is idiotic to be curious about the person.
girl clothes cost
It's funny, he said, have you ever thought that a girl's clothes cost more than the girl inside them?
real two people
There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about.
book heaven solitude
Not that she objected to solitude. Quite the contrary. She had books, thank Heaven, quantities of books. All sorts of books.
wings fire feelings
I want more of this feeling - fire and wings.