229 Quotes by Jean Rhys

The really important difficulty is the place, room, cave, cabin to write in. – Jean Rhys.

Everything tender and melancholy – as life is sometimes, just for one moment.

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.

Anything you like; anything I like... No past to make us sentimental, no future to embarrass us.

Justice. I’ve heard that word. I tried it out. I wrote it down. I wrote it down several times and always it looked like a damn cold lie to me. There is no justice.

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

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

There is no control over memory.

All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky. And then there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don’t matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake.