You imagine the carefully pruned, shaped thing that is presented to you is truth. That is just what it isn't. The truth is improbable, the truth is fantastic; it's in what you think is a distorting mirror that you see the truth.
Jean RhysRead
Your red dress,’ she said, and laughed. But I looked at the dress on the floor and it was as if the fire had spread across the room. It was beautiful and it reminded me of something I must do. I will remember I thought. I will remember quite soon now.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The red dress symbolizes beauty and memories that inspire action.
In this quote, the red dress represents not only physical beauty but also serves as a catalyst for reflection and personal motivation. The protagonist's emotional response to the dress evokes a sense of urgency, urging them to remember something significant that needs to be addressed, highlighting the intertwining of beauty, memory, and action in our lives.
Themes
Red DressBeautyMemoryInspirationAction
In practice
Example use cases
During a motivational speech about pursuing beauty in life even in difficult times.
More from Jean Rhys
All quotes →If I was bound for hell, let it be hell. No more false heaven. No more damned magic.
Jean RhysRead
The musty smell, the bugs, the lonliness, this room, which is part of the street outside-this is all I want from life.
Jean RhysRead
Yes, I am sad, sad as a circus-lioness, sad as an eagle without wings, sad as a violin with only one string and that one broken, sad as a woman who is growing old. Sad, sad, sad.
Jean RhysRead
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.
Jean RhysRead
I must write. If I stop writing my life will have been an abject failure. It is that already to other people. But it could be an abject failure to myself. I will not have earned death.
Jean RhysRead
Similar quotes
As a playwright, you are a torturer of actors and of the audience as well. You inflict things on people.
Tony KushnerRead
I think Mozart's operas 'The Marriage of Figaro' and 'Don Giovanni' are the two most perfect ever written. The music is magical.
Ruth Bader GinsburgRead
When I sit down to write, I don't think about writing about an idea or a given message. I just try to write a story which is hard enough.
Jhumpa LahiriRead
The pleasure we derive from the representation of the present is due, not only to the beauty it can be clothed in, but also to its essential quality of being the present.
Charles BaudelaireRead
For too many centuries women have been being muses to artists. I wanted to be the muse, I wanted to be the wife of the artist, but I was really trying to avoid the final issue — that I had to do the job myself.
Anais NinRead
Proficiency in a craft is essential to every artist. Therein lies the prime source of creative imagination. Let us then create a new guild of craftsmen without the class distinctions that raise an arrogant barrier between craftsman and artist!
Walter GropiusRead