To walk about London on a Sunday with nowhere to go - tha...

To walk about London on a Sunday with nowhere to go - that will take the heart out of you.

Whatever you do, don't be gloomy, because that gets on people's nerves.

And don't write about anything you know, for then you get excited and say too much, and that gets under their skins too.

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

I've had rather a rum life, but I was thinking the other day, would I go through it all again? I think not.

I like the man who wrote From Russia With Love... Ian Fleming. He's one who can take you away from everything if you're bored and sad.

No more pawings, no more pryings - leave me alone. ...

I hate the whole bloody business. It���s cruel, it���s idiotic, it���s unspeakably horrible.

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.

One day the fierce wolf that walks by my side will spring on you and rip your abominable guts out.

I was always happy in the morning, not always in the afternoon and never after sunset.

I'll bet my tears are ninety per cent gin.

I don't feel well. I don't feel up to it. My clothes are too shabby.

You know what you must do in your writing. You must tell the truth about them. You must tell the truth against their lies.

'Smile please,' the man said. 'Not quite so serious.'

When my first love affair came to an end I wrote this poem: I didn't know/ I didn't know/ I didn't know. Then I settled down to be miserable.

I am always being told that until my work ceases being "sordid and depressing" I haven't much chance of selling.

Haven't touched a drop for a month. Won't it be fine when I do.

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

Don't listen to what I say. Don't listen to me, I'll depress you.

I want a long, calm book about people with large incomes - a book like a flat green meadow and the sheep feeding in it.

I wish I were old and the whole damned thing were finished; then I shouldn't get this depressed feeling for nothing at all.

Justice. I've heard that word. I tried it out. I wrote it down. I wrote it down several times and always it looked like a damn cold lie.

Let's have more drinks, honey.

Detestable world.

'Oh, shut up about being tired,' she would say. 'You were born tired. I'm tired too. We're all tired.'

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

I'd never get into the sacred circle. I was always outside, shivering.

One is born either to go with or to go against.

'Obscene drawings on the tablecloth are not allowed here,' the waiter said as he approached.

Do you believe in God? I do not know. In human love? Yes. Still? Yes. In humanity? No.

There's very little invention in my books. What came first was the wish to get rid of this awful sadness that weighed me down.

His name was Disastrous because his godmother thought it such a pretty word.

'Quite like old times,' the room says. 'Yes? No?'

I'm over eighty. Look at me. And what have I done? Nothing! Nothing! Mediocrity. Mediocre, that's what my work is.

The mean things they got away with - sailed away with - smirking.

The estate house had been empty for so long that a centipede fell out of a book when I opened it.

Oh, God, I'm only twenty and I'll have to go on living and living and living.

So many people think I don't exist that sometimes I ask myself if I do.

I am alive I think. Not at all sure sometimes, and waving not drowning.

I feel it's very tactless of me to be alive. No savoir faire. (Damn little savoir vivre either)

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

I do believe that life's all laid out for one. One's choices don't matter much.

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

Oh God the stupidity, the ugliness, the darkness, the loneliness and the cruelty of this beastly little place.

Drama is catching, I find.

You look very perky, I hardly recognised you.

It's so cold in this damn place that I can't think of anything except how cold I am and cold in general and that cold is hell.

'Obscene drawings on the tablecloth are not allowed here,' the waiter said as he approached.

I am trying to stop hope growing again like the beanstalk.

I am tired. I learnt everything too late. Everything was always one jump ahead of me.

The trouble is I have plenty to say. Not only that but I am bound to say it.

Tears? There's not a tear in her.

The unutterably sweet peace of giving in.

It is cold and dark outside, and everything has gone out of me except misery.

I sat and I looked about and I thought: Why do I hate people? They're not hateful.

From Jean Rhys, various writings, various characters, via.