Jean Rhys

EDITOR'S NOTE: Evergreen skeet.

How old was I when I smashed the fair doll's face? I remember vividly the satisfaction of being wicked. The guilt that was half triumph.

I crept in and hid. The lid of the coffin shut down with a bang.

'Get up, girl, and dress yourself. Woman must have spunks to live in this wicked world.'

It was one of those days when you can see the ghosts of all the other lovely days. You drink a bit and watch the ghosts.

Lois also discussed Love, Childbirth, Complexes, Paris, Men, Prostitution, and Sensitiveness, which she thought an unmitigated nuisance.

My darling mustn’t worry my darling mustn’t be sad - I thought say that again say that again but he said it’s nearly four o’clock perhaps you ought to be going

Love was a terrible thing. You poisoned it and stabbed at it and knocked it down into the mud and it got up and staggered on, bleeding and muddy and awful. Like - like Rasputin.

I've thought about death a great deal. One day in the snow I felt so tired. I thought, Damn it, I'll sit down. I can't go on. I'm tired of living here in the snow and ice. So I sat down on the ground. But it was cold so I got up.

One day, quite suddenly, when you're not expecting it, I'll take a hammer from the folds of my dark cloak and crack your little skull.

Yesterday at the cinema in the one and threes, watching the usual thing. Biff. Bang. Why, you dirty double-crossing. Bang. Biff.

Outside does take a bit of getting used to - but what doesn't?? So damp.

So many people I've come across have been indifferent to books, and quite a few hate books, any books.

I can't say at all what I mean - the gift of expression seems to have left me, so you must guess.

Do not be sad. Or think Adieu. Never Adieu. We will watch the sun set again - many times.

She had hennaed her hair. It was cut short with a thick fringe. It suited her. But she had too much blue on her eyelids. Too much ‘Overture and Beginners’, I thought.

It is at night that you know old fears, old hopes, that you know unhappiness, turning from side to side under the mosquito-net, like a prisoner in a cell full of small peepholes.

You'd pine to death if you hadn't someone to look down on and insult.

I've had enough of these streets that sweat a cold, yellow slime, of hostile people, of crying myself to sleep every night.

I'm trying to do an autobiography now and it's very difficult to remember when I was a child in the West Indies. I did go back once. For a very short time. But all my nuns had gone.

If you sometimes long for a fierce dog to guard your cave, that's only on bad days. Perhaps tomorrow will be a good day.

Soon does one learn the bitter lesson that humanity is never content just to differ from you and let it go at that. Never.

She knew the pain was going to start again. And, sure enough, it did.

I wait for the evening and the wine and that's all.

I know I don't succeed, but look how hard I try.

I'll not be surprised if the BBC turns down Good Morning, Midnight, for I've had many brickbats hurled at it. I was fairly young then and self confident and imagined I could stand any number of brickbats.

If you were anything else but a tired-out coward, you’d swim out into the blue and never come back.

I bought some Penguins at Christmas. One J.D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye". It made me laugh a lot. I liked it.

The haughty dame is me, a bit ghostly in the sun, but wishing you a lovely time for Christmas and a happy lucky New Year.

How few people understood what a tightrope she walked or what would happen if she slipped. The abyss. Despair. All those things.