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
english-novelist finds home homes takes
Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere.
eagle growing sad string violin woman
I am sad, sad as a circus-lioness, sad as an eagle without wings, sad as a violin with only one string and one that is broken, sad as a woman who is growing old.
nice simple glasses
My life, which seems so simple and monotonous, is really a complicated affair of cafés where they like me and cafés where they don't, streets that are friendly, streets that aren't, rooms where I might be happy, rooms where I shall never be, looking-glasses I look nice in, looking-glasses I don't, dresses that will be lucky, dresses that won't, and so on.
friday sunday weekend
The feeling of Sunday is the same everywhere, heavy, melancholy, standing still.
goes-on able illusion
Of course she had some pathetic illusions about herself or she would not be able to go on living.
lioness circus
I am sad, sad as a circus-lioness...
rags illusion knows
...I know all about myself now, I know. You've told me so often. You haven't left me one rag of illusion to clothe myself in.
being-yourself children soul
When you are a child you are yourself and you know and see everything prophetically. And then suddenly something happens and you stop being yourself; you become what others force you to be. You lose your wisdom and your soul.
betrayal doe traitor
And what does anyone know about traitors, or why Judas did what he did?
golden-days lasts sun
But they never last, the golden days. And it can be sad, the sun in the afternoon, can't it? Yes, it can be sad, the afternoon sun, sad and frightening.
dream lying magic
Only the magic and the dream are true — all the rest's a lie.
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.
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!
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.