229 Quotes by Jean Rhys

Wasn’t it quite difficult being a wicked girl? Even more difficult than being a good one?

I took the red dress down and put it against myself. ‘Does it make me look intemperate and unchaste?’ I said.

Your husband certainly love money,′ she said. ‘That is no lie Money have pretty face for everybody, but for that man money pretty like pretty self, he can’t see nothing else.

I’ve had enough of these streets that sweat a cold, yellow slime, of hostile people, of crying myself to sleep every night. I’ve had enough of thinking, enough of remembering.

I sit at my window and the words fly past me like birds – with God’s help I catch some.

Unhappily children do hurt flies.

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

And I saw that all my life I had known that this was going to happen, and that I’d been afraid for a long time, I’d been afraid for a long time. There’s fear, of course, with everybody. But now it had grown, it had grown gigantic; it filled me and it filled the whole world.

These people all fling themselves at me. Because I am uneasy and sad they all fling themselves at me larger than life. But I can put my arm up to avoid the impact and they slide gently to the ground. Individualists, completely wrapped up in themselves, thank God. It’s the extrovert, prancing around, dying for a bit of fun – that’s the person you’ve got to be wary of.