“Today I must be very careful, today I have left my armor at home.”
― Jean Rhys, quote from Good Morning, Midnight
“A room is, after all, a place where you hide from the wolves. That's all any room is.”
― Jean Rhys, quote from Good Morning, Midnight
“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.”
― Jean Rhys, quote from Good Morning, Midnight
“We can't all be happy, we can't all be rich, we can't all be lucky - and it would be so much less fun if we were... There must be the dark background to show up the bright colours. ”
― Jean Rhys, quote from Good Morning, Midnight
“Yes, I am sad, sad as a circus-lioness, sad as an eagle without wings, sad as a violin with only one string and that one broken, sad as a woman who is growing old. Sad, sad, sad...”
― Jean Rhys, quote from Good Morning, Midnight
“...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.”
― Jean Rhys, quote from Good Morning, Midnight
“Every word I say has chains round its ankles; every thought I think is weighted with heavy weights.”
― Jean Rhys, quote from Good Morning, Midnight
“You imagine the carefully pruned, shaped thing that is presented to you is truth. That is just what it isn't. The truth is improbable, the truth is fantastic; it's in what you think is a distorting mirror that you see the truth.”
― Jean Rhys, quote from Good Morning, Midnight
“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.”
― Jean Rhys, quote from Good Morning, Midnight
“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.”
― Jean Rhys, quote from Good Morning, Midnight
“I've been so ridiculous all my life that a little bit more or a little bit less hardly matters now.”
― Jean Rhys, quote from Good Morning, Midnight
“Now I no longer wish to be loved, beautiful, happy or successful. I want one thing and one thing only - to be left alone.”
― Jean Rhys, quote from Good Morning, Midnight
“I want more of this feeling - fire and wings.”
― Jean Rhys, quote from Good Morning, Midnight
“Everything tender and melancholy - as life is sometimes, just for one moment.”
― Jean Rhys, quote from Good Morning, Midnight
“It is strange how sad it can be - sunlight in the afternoon, don't you think?”
― Jean Rhys, quote from Good Morning, Midnight
“Some must cry so that others may be able to laugh the more heartily. Sacrifices are necessary...”
― Jean Rhys, quote from Good Morning, Midnight
“Quite like old times,' the room says.”
― Jean Rhys, quote from Good Morning, Midnight
“Every word I say has chains round its ankles; every thought I think is weighted with heavy weights. Since I was born, hasn't every word I've said, every thought I've thought, everything I've done, been tied up, weighted, chained? And mind you, I know that with all this I don't succeed. Or I succeed in flashes only too damned well. ...But think how hard I try and how seldom I dare. Think - and have a bit of pity. That is, if you ever think, you apes, which I doubt.”
― Jean Rhys, quote from Good Morning, Midnight
“Even the one moment that you thought was your eternity fades out and is forgotten and dies.”
― Jean Rhys, quote from Good Morning, Midnight
“A room? A nice room? A beautiful room? A beautiful room with bath? Swing high, swing low, swing to and fro...This happened and that happened...
And then the days came and I was alone.”
― Jean Rhys, quote from Good Morning, Midnight
“You want to know what I'm afraid of? All right, I'll tell you. I'm afraid of men - yes, I'm very much afraid of men. And I'm even more afraid of women. And I'm very much afraid of the whole bloody human race. Afraid of them? Of course I'm afraid of them. Who wouldn't be afraid of a pack of damned hyenas? [...] And when I say afraid - that's just a word I use. What I really mean is that I hate them. I hate their voices, I hate their eyes, I hate the way they laugh. I hate the whole bloody business. It's cruel, it's idiotic, it's unspeakably horrible. I never had the guts to kill myself or I'd have got out of it long ago.”
― Jean Rhys, quote from Good Morning, Midnight
“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.”
― Jean Rhys, quote from Good Morning, Midnight
“Would you like a whiskey?' I say. 'I've got some.'
(That's original. I bet nobody's ever thought of that way of bridging the gap before.)”
― Jean Rhys, quote from Good Morning, Midnight
“They think in terms of a sentimental ballad. And that's what terrifies you about them. It isn't their cruelty, it isn't even their shrewdness - it's their extraordinary naivete. Everything in their whole bloody world is a cliche. Everything is born out of a cliche, rests on a cliche, survives by a cliche. And they believe in the cliches - there's no hope”
― Jean Rhys, quote from Good Morning, Midnight
“I am empty of everything. I am empty of everything but the thin, frail ghosts in my room.”
― Jean Rhys, quote from Good Morning, Midnight
“The musty smell, the bugs, the lonliness, this room, which is part of the street outside-this is all I want from life.”
― Jean Rhys, quote from Good Morning, Midnight
“After all this, what happened?
What happened was that, as soon as I had the slightest chance of a place to hide in, I crept into it and hid.
Well, sometimes it's a fine day isn't it? Sometimes the skies are blue. Sometimes the air is light, easy to breathe.
And there is always tomorrow...”
― Jean Rhys, quote from Good Morning, Midnight
“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!”
― Jean Rhys, quote from Good Morning, Midnight
“Satin skin, silk hair, velvet eyes, sawdust heart - all complete.”
― Jean Rhys, quote from Good Morning, Midnight
“But why do you want to talk to me?'
He is going to say: 'Because you look so kind,' or 'Because you look so beautiful and kind,' or, subtly, 'Because you look as if you'll understand....'
He says: 'Because I think you won't betray me.'
I had meant to get this mean to talk to me and tell me all about it, and then be so devastatingly English that perhaps I should manage to hurt him a little in return for all the many times I've been hurt.... 'Because I think you won't betray me, because I think you won't betray me....' Now it won't be so easy.”
― Jean Rhys, quote from Good Morning, Midnight
Jean Rhys
Born place: in Roseau, Dominica
Born date August 24, 1890
See more on GoodReads
“I was camped at the same site as her: Broughton Farm. She came over to my tent and showed me her blisters. She asked me whether I knew the reason why a blister can keep on producing fluid ad infinitum. I said that I had always wondered the same thing about mucus. One of the reasons we are together is because we have similar interests.”
― Joe Dunthorne, quote from Submarine
“Facing one’s past can be a perilous activity. For the client, joy must exceed misery. Personal successes must far outweigh losses. Pleasure must exceed pain. Always. Always. To do otherwise is a failure of the counselor.— André Chevalier”
― Nikki Sex, quote from Abuse
“At the window he sits and looks out, musing on the river, a little brown hen duck paddling upstream among the windwaves close to the far bank. What he has understood lies behind him like a road in the woods. He is a wilderness looking out at the wild.”
― Wendell Berry, quote from The Collected Poems, 1957-1982
“En épocas extrañas hasta la muerte puede morir.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror
“I think fiction allows us to sit for a while with people we would rather not meet.”
― Uwem Akpan, quote from Say You're One of Them
Dare You To
Red Seas Under Red S...
Vampire Kisses
Heir of Novron
The Cost of Disciple...
Brief LivesBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
