Daphne Du Maurier Quotes

But luxury has never appealed to me, I like simple things, books, being alone, or with somebody who understands.

Happiness happens when you fit with your life, when you fit so harmoniously that whatsoever you are doing is your joy. Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.

Look on each day that comes as a challenge, as a test of courage.

The pain will come in waves, some days worse than others, for no apparent reason. Accept the pain. Little by little, you will find new strength, new vision, born of the very pain and loneliness which seem, at first, impossible to master.

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.

Men are simpler than you imagine my sweet child.

But what goes on in the twisted, tortuous minds of women would baffle anyone.

I wish I was a woman of about thirty-six dressed in black satin with a string of pearls.

I am glad it cannot happen twice, the fever of first love.

For it is a fever, and a burden, too, whatever the poets may say.

A dreamer, I walked enchanted, and nothing held me back.

There is no going back in life. There is no return. No second chance.

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.

Nothing like a cup of tea to make a person feel better, man or woman.

There was never an accident.Rebecca was not drowned at all. I killed her.I shot Rebecca in the cottage in the cove.I carried her body to the cabin, and took the boat out that night and sunk it there, where they found it today.It's Rebecca who's lying dead there on the cabin floor.Will you look into my eyes and tell me that you love me now?

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

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.

The urge to climb will never be explained.

In olden days, perhaps it was a wish to reach the stars. Today, anyone so minded can buy a seat on a plane and feel himself master of the skies. Even so, he will not have rock under his feet, or air upon his face; nor will he know the silence that comes only on the hills.

All autobiography is self-indulgent.

People who mattered could not take the humdrum world.

But this was not the world, it was enchantment; and all of it was mine.

A bad workman blames his tools.

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.

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.

How lacking in intuition men could be in persuading themselves that mending some stranger's socks, and attending to his comfort, could content a woman.

The moment of crisis had come, and I must face it. My old fears, my diffidence, my shyness, my hopeless sense of inferiority, must be conquered now and thrust aside. If I failed now I should fail forever.

Why, he wondered, should he remember her suddenly, on such a day, watching the rain falling on the apple trees?

...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.

I have no talent for making new friends, but oh such genius for fidelity to old ones.

Once a person gave his talent to the world, the world put a stamp upon it. The talent was not a personal possession any more. It was something to be traded, bought and sold. It fetched a high price, or a low one. It was kicked in the common market.

The trouble is, walking in Venice becomes compulsive once you start. Just over the next bridge, you say, and then the next one beckons.

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.

Writing every book is like a purge; at the end of it one is empty ... like a dry shell on the beach, waiting for the tide to come in again.

there's something about Paris that gives you a mental slap all the time, and you can't just sit still and do nothing. You've got to work, to keep up with the pace, the sting in the atmosphere.

When one is writing a novel in the first person, one must be that person.

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.

…you guessed that somewhere, in heaven knew what country and what guise, there was someone who was part of your body and your brain, and that without him you were lost, a straw blown by the wind.

Life and death do not wait for legal action.

She knew that this was happiness, this was living as she had always wished to live.

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.

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

So you see, when war comes to one’s village, one’s doorstep, it isn’t tragic and impersonal any longer. It is just an excuse to vomit private hatred. That is why I am not a great patriot.

...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.

He was like someone sleeping who woke suddenly and found the world...all the beauty of it, and the sadness too. The hunger and the thirst. Everything he had never thought about or known was there before him, and magnified into one person who by chance, or fate--call it what you will--happened to be me.

When she smiled it was as though she embraced the world.

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.

How simple life becomes when things like mirrors are forgotten.

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.

A familiar name on its own, however, does not carry its bearer far unless the talent is there, and the will to work.

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.

And I don't like books which are full of name dropping.

no person will ever get into my blood as a place can ... People and things pass away, but not places.

Looking from the window at the fantastic light and colour of my glittering fairy-world of fact that holds no tenderness, no quietude, I long suddenly for peace, for understanding.