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
fear long world
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.
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.
would-be longing thirsty
She had left me thirsty and all my life would be thirst and longing for what I had lost before I found it.
beautiful fall long
You can pretend for a long time, but one day it all falls away and you are alone. We are alone in the most beautiful place in the world...
hurt long people
I long to be ... Like Other People! The extraordinary, ungetatable, oddly cruel Other People, with their way of wantonly hurting and then accusing you of being thin-skinned, sulky, vindictive or ridiculous.
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.
action
She haunted him, as an ungenerous action haunts one.
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.
children liars believe
Stephan was secretive and a liar, but he was a very gentle and expert lover. She was the petted, cherished child, the desired mistress, the worshipped, perfumed goddess. She was all these things to Stephan - or so he made her believe.
shadow important substance
One realized all sorts of things. The value of an illusion, for instance, and that the shadow can be more important than the substance. All sorts of things.
beautiful destiny beautiful-things
Have all beautiful things sad destinies?