Jean Rhys Quotes

“I will write my name in fire red, Antoinette Mason, née Cosway, Mount Calvary Convent, Spanish Town, Jamaica, 1839.”

“We stared at each other, blood on my face, tears on hers. It was as if I saw myself. Like in a looking-glass.”

“There is no looking-glass here and I don’t know what I am like now... The girl I saw was myself not quite myself. Long ago when I was a child and very lonely I tried to kiss her. But the glass was between us – hard, cold, and misted over with my breath. Now they have taken everything away. What am I doing in this place and who am I?”

“So I shall never understand why, suddenly, bewilderingly, I was certain that everything I had imagined to be truth was false. False. Only the magic and the dream are true – all the rest’s a lie. Let it go. Here is the secret. Here.”

″(Christophine) is intelligent in her way and can express herself well, but I did not like the look of her at all, and consider her a most dangerous person. My wife insisted that she had gone back to Martinique her native island, and was very upset that I had mentioned the matter even in such a roundabout fashion.”

“Reality might disconcert her, bewilder her, hurt her, but it would not be reality. It would be only a mistake, a misfortune, a wrong path taken, her fixed ideas would never change.”

“I scarcely recognized her voice. No warmth, no sweetness. The doll had a doll’s voice, a breathless but curiously indifferent voice.”

“Bertha is not my name. You are trying to make me into someone else, calling me by another name. I know, that’s obeah too.”

“Only I know how long I have been here. Nights and days and days and nights, hundreds of them slipping through my fingers. But that does not matter. Time has no meaning. But something you can touch and hold like my red dress, that has a meaning.”

“She is not béké like you, but she is béké, and not like us either.”

“I remember saying in a voice that was not like my own that it was too light.”

“There would be the sky and the mountains, the flowers and the girl and the feeling that all this was a nightmare, the faint consoling hope that I might wake up.”

“Then she cursed me comprehensively, my eyes, my mouth, every member of my body, and it was like a dream in the large unfurnished room with the candles flickering and this red-eyed wild-haired stranger who was my wife shouting obscenities at me.”

″‘What you do with her money, eh?’ Her voice was still quiet but with a hiss in it when she said ‘money.’ I thought, of course, that is what all the rigamarole is about. I no longer felt dazed, tired, half-hypnotized, but alert and wary, ready to defend myself.”

“I must know more than I know already. For I know that house where I will be cold and not belonging, the bed I shall lie in has red curtains, and I have slept there many times before, long ago. How long ago? In that bed I will dream the end of my dream. But my dream had nothing to do with England and I must not think like this, I must remember about chandeliers and dancing, about swans and roses and snow.”

″(Christophine) had a quiet voice and a quiet laugh (when she did laugh), and though she could speak good English if she wanted to, and French as well as patois, she took care to talk as they talked.”

“It was their talk about Christophine that changed Coulibri, not the repairs or the new furniture or the strange faces. Their talk about Christophine and obeah changed it.”

“Say nothing and it may not be true.”

“Lies are never forgotten, they go on and they grow.”

“I went to bed early and slept at once. I dreamed that I was walking in the forest. Not alone. Someone who hated me was with me, out of sight. I could hear heavy footsteps coming closer and though I struggled and screamed I could not move.”