Daphne du Maurier - Rebecca (1938)

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Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.

Daphne du Maurier
Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.

Daphne du Maurier
If there's one thing that makes a man sick, it's to have his ale poured out of an ugly hand.

Daphne du Maurier
Come and see us if you feel like it,' she said. 'I always expect people to ask themselves. Life is too short to send out invitations.

Daphne du Maurier
Why did dogs make one want to cry? There was something so quiet and hopeless about their sympathy. Jasper, knowing something was wrong, as dogs always do. Trunks being packed. Cars being brought to the door. Dogs standing with drooping tails, dejected eyes. Wandering back to their baskets in the hall when the sound of the car dies away.

Daphne du Maurier
But I should say that kindliness, and sincerity, and if I may say so—modesty—are worth far more to a man, to a husband, than all the wit and beauty in the world.

Daphne du Maurier
The road to Manderley lay ahead. There was no moon. The sky above our heads was inky black. But the sky on the horizon was not dark at all. It was shot with crimson, like a splash of blood. And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea.

Daphne du Maurier
I wondered why it was that places are so much lovelier when one is alone.

Daphne du Maurier
Men are simpler than you imagine my sweet child. But what goes on in the twisted, tortuous minds of women would baffle anyone.

Daphne du Maurier
I wondered how many people there were in the world who suffered, and continued to suffer, because they could not break out from their own web of shyness and reserve, and in their blindness and folly built up a great distorted wall in front of them that hid the truth.

Daphne du Maurier
Time will mellow it, make it a moment for laughter. But now it was not funny, now I did not laugh. It was not the future, it was the present. It was too vivid and too real.

Daphne du Maurier
The routine of life goes on, whatever happens, we do the same things, go through the little performance of eating, sleeping, washing. No crisis can break through the crust of habit.

Daphne du Maurier
Every moment was a precious thing, having in it the essence of finality.

Daphne du Maurier
We know one another. This is the present. There is no past and no future. Here I am washing my hands, and the cracked mirror shows me to myself, suspended as it were, in time; this is me, this moment will not pass.

Daphne du Maurier
He had the face of one who walks in his sleep, and for a wild moment the idea came to me that perhaps he was not normal, not altogether sane. There were people who had trances, I had surely heard of them, and they followed strange laws of which we could know nothing, they obeyed the tangled orders of their own sub-conscious minds. Perhaps he was one of them, and here we were within six feet of death.

Daphne du Maurier
He stole horses' you'll say to yourself, 'and he didn't care for women; and but for my pride I'd have been with him now.

Daphne du Maurier
Those dripping crumpets, I can see them now. Tiny crisp wedges of toast, and piping-hot, flaky scones. Sandwiches of unknown nature, mysteriously flavoured and quite delectable, and that very special gingerbread. Angel cake, that melted in the mouth, and his rather stodgier companion, bursting with peel and raisins. There was enough food there to keep a starving family for a week.

Daphne du Maurier
All whispers and echoes from a past that is gone teem into the sleeper's brain, and he is with them, and part of them.

Daphne du Maurier
I had build up false pictures in my mind and sat before them. I had never had the courage to demand the truth.

Daphne du Maurier
If only there could be an invention that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again.

Daphne du Maurier
The peace of Manderley. The quietude and the grace. Whoever lived within its walls, whatever trouble there was and strife, however much uneasiness and pain, no matter what tears were shed, what sorrows borne, the peace of Manderley could not be broken or the loveliness destroyed.

Daphne du Maurier
Jem was safe from her, and he would ride away with a song on his lips and a laugh at her expense, forgetful of her, and of his brother, and of God; while she dragged through the years, sullen and bitter, the stain of silence marking her, coming in the end to ridicule as a soured spinster who had been kissed once in her life and could not forget it.

Daphne du Maurier
I would have gone too but I wanted to come straight back to you.I kept thinking of you, waiting here, all by yourself, not knowing what was going to happen.

Daphne du Maurier
When the leaves rustle, they sound very much like the stealthy movement of a woman in evening dress, and when they shiver suddenly, and fall, and scatter away along the ground, they might be the patter of a woman's hurrying footsteps, and the mark in the gravel the imprint of a high-heeled shoe.

Daphne du Maurier
I suppose sooner or later in the life of everyone comes a moment of trial. We all of us have our particular devil who rides us and torments us, and we must give battle in the end.

Daphne du Maurier
Either you go to America with Mrs. Van Hopper or you come home to Manderley with me." "Do you mean you want a secretary or something?" "No, I'm asking you to marry me, you little fool.

Daphne du Maurier
It wouldn't make for sanity would it, living with the devil.

Daphne du Maurier
From the very first, I knew that it would be so...I smiled to myself, and said, "That — and none other.

Daphne du Maurier
This house sheltered us, we spoke, we loved within those walls. That was yesterday. To-day we pass on, we see it no more, and we are different, changed in some infinitesimal way. We can never be quite the same again.

Daphne du Maurier
I believe there is a theory that men and women emerge finer and stronger after suffering, and that to advance in this or any world we must endure ordeal by fire.

Daphne du Maurier