Tigers are Better-Looking Quotes

“....one of those long, romantic novels, six hundred and fifty pages of small print, translated from French or German or Hungarian or something -- because few of the English ones have the exact feeling I mean. And you read one page of it or even one phrase of it, and then you gobble up all the rest and go about in a dream for weeks afterwards, for months afterwards -- perhaps all your life, who knows? -- surrounded by those six hundred and fifty pages, the houses, the streets, the snow, the river, the roses, the girls, the sun, the ladies' dresses and the gentlemen's voices, the old, wicked, hard-hearted women and the old, sad women, the waltz music -- everything. What is not there you put in afterwards, for it is alive, this book, and it grows in your head. 'The house I was living in when I read that book,' you think, or 'This colour reminds me of that book.”
― Jean Rhys, Tigers are Better-Looking: With a Selection from The Left Bank

“...there is peace in despair in exactly the same way as there is despair in peace.”
― Jean Rhys, Tigers are Better-Looking: With a Selection from The Left Bank

“Shall I tell her that in spite of everything they did I died then? Shall I tell her what it feels like to be dead? It's not being sad, it's quite different. It's being nothing, feeling nothing. (...) it's like walking along a road in a fog, knowing that you have left everything behind you. But you don't want to go back; you've got to go on.”
― Jean Rhys, Tigers are Better-Looking: With a Selection from The Left Bank

“But are you telling me the real secret, how to be exactly like everybody else? Tell me, for I am sure you know. If it means being deaf, then I'll be deaf. And if it means being blind, then I'll be blind.”
― Jean Rhys, Tigers are Better-Looking: With a Selection from The Left Bank

“...you can't die and come to life again for a few hundred francs. It takes more than that. It takes more, perhaps, than anybody is ever willing to give.”
― Jean Rhys, Tigers are Better-Looking: With a Selection from The Left Bank

“So darned easy to plot that - and always at the last moment - one is afraid. Or cheats oneself with hope.”
― Jean Rhys, Tigers are Better-Looking: With a Selection from The Left Bank