Rewrite and revise. Do not be afraid to seize what you have and cut it to ribbons. . . Good writing means good revising.
I took the red dress down and put it against myself. 'Does it make me look intemperate and unchaste?' I said.
I would never be part of anything. I would never really belong anywhere, and I knew it, and all my life would be the same, trying to belong, and failing. Always something would go wrong. I am a stranger and I always will be, and after all I didn’t really care.
My life, which seems so simple and monotonous, is really a complicated affair of cafés where they like me and cafés where they don't, streets that are friendly, streets that aren't, rooms where I might be happy, rooms where I shall never be, looking-glasses I look nice in, looking-glasses I don't, dresses that will be lucky, dresses that won't, and so on.
All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky. And then there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don't matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake.
Now I no longer wish to be loved, beautiful, happy or successful. I want one thing and one thing only - to be left alone.
You can pretend for a long time, but one day it all falls away and you are alone. We are alone in the most beautiful place in the world.
Religious believers of the world, you are free to continue to debate the simple, narrow question that divides you from atheists, but you have no right, in so doing, to treat the Humanists of the world with contempt. You owe them a deep debt of gratitude, for not only have they shed much light on a naturally dark world but they have very probably helped civilize your own specific religion.
Progress is the increasing control of the environment by life.
Tonight," he whispered, his voice hoarse and hot in her ear, "I will make you mine. " -Simon to Daphne
Without the support from religion--remember, we talked about it--no father, using only his own resources, would be able to bring up a child.