Jean Rhys

Oh, a heartstopper is the solitaire's one note - high, sweet, lonely, magic. You hold your breath to listen ... No ... Gone.

Cheriton is a dreadful place. There are no shops and nothing to be had. And a wind like a knife that never stops.

There is a lovely cold bracing wind. However it does not brace me.

Because she was outside the machine they might come along any time with a pair of huge iron tongs and pick her up and put her on the rubbish heap, and there she would lie and rot.

My voice sounded so prissy on her tape recorder - Dreadful. Perhaps it's turned him against me. I shouldn't wonder.

You haven't any idea how sick I am of all the phoney talk about Communism - and the phoney talk of the other lot, if it comes to that.

At lunch she drank a half-bottle of Burgundy and felt very hopeful.

At the fifth or sixth disappointment you cry more easily. After the tenth you give it up. You are broken - no nerves left.

Wish me well for I've tried hard.

This place London is like a cold dark dream sometimes.

I knew that my dreams were dreams. But the sadness I felt looking at the shabby white house - I wasn't prepared for that.

I saw the chandelier and the red carpet downstairs and the bamboos and the tree ferns, the gold ferns and the silver, and the soft green velvet of the moss on the garden wall.

The scent that came from the dress was very faint at first, then it grew stronger. The smell of vetiver and frangipani, of cinnamon and dust and lime trees when they are flowering. The smell of the sun and the smell of the rain.

I was a G.K. Chesterton sort of socialist, a cow and an acre of land for every man, that kind of thing.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Thank you, Deborah. I am grateful for that expression of gratitude.

I go to a hotel near the Place de la Madeleine. There are a lot of flies in this room. They torment me. I kill one. I didn’t know flies have blood just like you and me. Well, there it lies, with its wings still and its legs turned up. You won’t dance again….

Despair, grey-yellow like their sky. I stayed by the window in the cold thinking ‘What is going to become of me? Why am I here at all?’

I didn't ask to be born; I didn't make the world as it is; I didn't make myself as I am; I am not one of the guilty ones.

War was declared and they didn't want books ... I was forgotten and I gave up writing.

If you think that a child cannot recognise hatred and remember it for life you are most damnably mistaken.

The real snag is that everything in the entire place is a "gadget" - and I cannot work gadgets.

The Hell of those who seek, strive, rebel. The heaven of those who cannot think or avoid thought, who have no imagination.

A bedroom, balcony and cabinet de toilette in a cheap Montmartre hotel cannot possibly be called a solid background.

'Loneliness is all very well,' he said, 'but it needs fine weather.'

When I see how anxiously he is watching the meter I am sorry I insisted on taking the taxi. All the same, I should have dropped dead if I had tried to walk this distance.

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.

Twelve o'clock on a fine autumn day, and nothing to worry about. Some money to spend and nothing to worry about.

No one knows anything but himself or herself. And that badly. Don't you think so? Other people are seen and heard and felt. Known? Not on your life.

Let's have more drinks, honey.

Marble memorial tablets on the walls commemorating the virtues of the last generation of planters. All benevolent. All slave-owners. All resting in peace. When we came out of the church I took her hand. It was cold as ice in the hot sun.

've drunk the milk in the refrigerator. I was thirsty after that party last night, though if you call that a party I call it a wake. Besides, I know how you dislike the stuff (Freud! Bow-wow-wow!!). So you'll have to have your tea straight, my dear.

'Cheer up,' he said. 'The world is big. There's hope.' 'Of course.' But suddenly I saw the women's long, scowling faces over their lupins and their poppies, and my room in Torrington Square and the iron bars of my bedstead, and I thought, 'Not for me.'

This is not another poem. Don't worry. But please read it - my letter. I know very well that my worry doesn't matter to anyone Not much. And quite right too.

I knew how to get away from the heat and the shouting, for there was shouting now. When I was out on the battlements it was cool and I could hardly hear them.

He was a young poet and he realised that before him in all probability stretched endlessly thousands of mornings. On every one of which he’d have to get up and bathe.

You jump in with no willing and eager friends around, and when you sink you sink to the accompaniment of loud laughter.

This time I must not blot a line. No revision, no second thoughts. Down it shall go. Already I am terrified.

She heard nothing but the incoherent, interminable conversation in her head.

Some old people are lonely. But a great many others live in dread of being argued with, persuaded or even forced to do something which they know will be catastrophic.

Persecution maniacs (so called) always have been, and usually still are, the victims of persecution.

‘I’m not a bad sort,’ he was thinking. ‘Who says that I’m a bad sort? I wish all the swine who do could see me now. How many of them would give a drink to a woman who had smacked them in the face in public?’

Oh, God, let me be pretty when I grow up. Let me be, let me be. Oh, God.

The lace curtains were torn and very dirty. Behind the curtains was a green and optimistic sunblind, faintly irritating, like a stupid joke.

I've gone so dead I don't know whether I'm mad or everybody else is. Never mind, I'm relying on the kick I'll get out of my first drink.

I love you, I love you, I love you.

She talked about books till I wanted to scream - or say Merde or something. I agreed with everything she said God help me - and was miserable all next day.

It is my private and particular belief that very few people change after well say seven or seventeen. Not really.

'I am not used to happiness,' she said. 'It makes me afraid.'

London always smells the same. 'Frowsty,' you think, 'but I'm glad to be back.' And just for a while it bears you up. 'Anything's round the corner,' you think. But long before you get round the corner it lets you drop.

Save me from destruction, ruin and desolation. Save me from the long slow death by ants.