Almost any book was better than life, Audrey thought. Or rather, life as she was living it. Of course, life would soon change, open out, become quite different. You couldn't go on if you didn't hope that, could you? But for the time being there was no doubt that it was pleasant to get away from it. And books could take her away.

— Jean Rhys

And I’ll look back at him because I shan’t be able to help it, remembering about being young, and about being made love to and making love, about pain and dancing and not being afraid of death, about all music I’ve ever loved, and every time I’ve been happy.

— Jean Rhys

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.

— Jean Rhys

And then the days came when I was alone.

— Jean Rhys

And what does anyone know about traitors, or why Judas did what he did?

— Jean Rhys

Anything you like; anything I like... No past to make us sentimental, no future to embarrass us

— Jean Rhys

As for her, I'd forgotten her for the moment. So I shall never understand why, suddenly, bewilderingly, I was certain that everything I had imagined being 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.

— Jean Rhys

As soon as I turned the key I saw it hanging, the color of fire and sunset. The color of flamboyant flowers. ‘If you are buried under a flamboyant tree, ‘ I said, ‘your soul is lifted when it flowers. Everyone wants that.’ She shook her head, but she did not move or touch me.

— Jean Rhys

At twenty-four, she imagined with dread that she was growing old.

— Jean Rhys

But in the daytime it was all right. And when you'd had a drink you knew it was the best way to live in the world because anything might happen. I don't know how people live when they know exactly what's going to happen to them each day.

— Jean Rhys