Wide Sargasso Sea Quotes

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

"...Money have pretty face for everybody, but for that man money pretty like pretty self, he can't see nothing else.

I...think about being hungry, being cold, being hurt, being ridiculed, as if it were in another life than this.
This damned room - it's saturated with the past. . . .It's all the rooms I've ever slept in, all the streets I've ever walked in. Now the whole thing moves in an ordered, undulating procession past my eyes. Rooms, streets, streets, rooms. . . .

It was obvious that this was not an Anglo-Saxon: he was too gay, too dirty, too unreserved and in his little eyes was such a mellow comprehension of all the sins and the delights of life. He was drinking rapidly one glass of beer after another, smoking a long, curved pipe, and beaming contentedly on the world. The woman with him wore a black coat and skirt; she had her back to us.
I said:
'Who's the happy man in the corner? I've never seen him before.'

It was as if a curtain had fallen, hiding everything I had ever known. It was almost like being born again. The colours were different, the smells different, the feeling things gave you right down inside yourself was different. Not just the difference between heat, cold; light, darkness; purple, grey. But a difference in the way I was frightened and the way I was happy. (first lines of Part One)

Funny how it's slipped away, Vienna. Nothing left but a few snapshots. (beginning of "Vienne")

"It's so easy to make a person who hasn't got anything seem wrong." (chapter 4)

When I was excited about life, I didn't want to write at all. I've never written when I was happy. I didn't want to. But I've never had a long period of being happy. 'Do you think think anyone has? I think you can be peaceful for a long time. When I think about it, if I had to choose, I'd rather be happy than write. You see, there's very little invention in my books. What came first with most of them was the wish to get rid of this awful sadness that weighed me down. I found when I was a child that if I could put the hurt into words, it would go. It leaves a sort of melancholy behind and then it goes.

I wonder too if I am terribly excited about something that has been done ages ago (1964)

It was the darkness that got you. It was heavy darkness, greasy and compelling. It made walls round you, and shut you in so that you felt like you could not breathe. (chapter 3)

I've noticed that. They believe the lies far more than they believe the truth.

The last time you were happy about nothing; the first time you were afraid about nothing. Which came first? (chapter 12)

Very few people change after well say seven or seventeen. Not really. They get more this or more that and of course look a bit different. But inside they are the same. (1955)

I don't know how people live when they know exactly what's going to happen to them each day. (Part One, 7th section)

I am always being told that until my work ceases being "sordid and depressing" I haven't much chance of selling. (1931)