Jean Rhys Quotes

I am fascinated by that notion of people are never as they seem. And that doesn't make them good or bad. It's just we don't ever really show ourselves if we don't have to.

Every experience is a paradox in that it means to be absolute, and yet is relative; in that it somehow always goes beyond itself and yet never escapes itself.

I've been around for so long, people have their perceptions of me: good, bad or indifferent.

A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.

My public persona is badly warped and bears little resemblance to the person those closest to me know.

I think I'm pretty misunderstood, because I'm not just about football.

I am a collection of thoughts and memories and likes and dislikes. I am the things that have happened to me and the sum of everything I've ever done. I am the clothes I wear on my back. I am every place and every person and every object I have ever come across. I am a bag of bones stuck to a very large rock spinning a thousand miles an hour.

I look at myself objectively and in a way I see myself as a commodity. Your name becomes somehow outside yourself. Now, when I'm at home being Mrs. Scarfe, that's when I'm most myself.

I'm nothing more than what you actually see, but I am also the complete opposite.

What my day is like depends on where I am.

Being human is being a lot of things at the same time.

I get labelled as just being about one thing, but there's lots of layers to what I do.

If I had two faces, do you think I would be wearing this one.

Some people remember me for my color; some people remember me as a friend.

I can see how people would just assume I am a no-nonsense kind of girl, you know? But the truth is, it's not who I am. But when I need to be, I can be tough.

I like being photographed without glasses. I don't want to be pretentious.

When you are born into a body that takes the image of another, you ask yourself a question much like the famous 'chicken and egg' conundrum. Do you take the form of he, or does he take the form of you?

One person might perceive me as godlike, and the next might think I'm a northern thug. I don't think I've done myself any favours... but I swear I've not had a proper fight since I was 14.

For those who pass it without entering, the city is one thing; it is another for those who are trapped by it and never leave. There is the city where you arrive for the first time; and there is another city which you leave never to return. Each deserves a different name; perhaps I have already spoken of Irene under other names; perhaps I have spoken only of Irene.

I'm not going to try and change how people perceive me. I think it's important to be a contradiction. People are contradictions; everyone has contradictions. So I don't expect anyone to look at me differently.

What do you see when you see me?' She asked him, burying her own face in his bosom. 'Do you want the truth?' She nodded. 'The firing squad.' 'That's not the whole truth. Try again.' 'Insatiability,' he said with some bitterness. 'That's oblique but altogether too simple. Once more,' she insisted. 'One more time.' He was silent for several minutes. 'The map of a country in which I only exist by virtue of the extravagance of my metaphors.' 'Now you're being too sophisticated. And, besides, what metaphors do we have in common?

We are not always even what we are most.

I have no problem with people seeing me as the nice guy. I hope they don't see me as just the nice guy.

Everybody thinks I'm this delicate little girl. But you can't tell a book by it's cover.' To which she added a momentary smile.

He's very nice. He's something I replied. She considered this zipping her purse shut. Then she said Well everyone is. Everyone is Something. For some reason that stuck with me simple and yet not every since she'd said it. It was like a puzzle as well two vague words with one clear one between them.