Daphne Du Maurier quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Daphne Du Maurier

Daphne Du Maurier Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Daphne Du Maurier on Wise Famous Quotes.

The relief was tremendous. I did not feel sick anymore. The pain had gone...I had no idea I was so empty.

The fact that it's black transforms it. Has the same effect on women that black stockings have on men.

If you think I'm one of those people who try to be funny at breakfast you're wrong. I'm invariably ill-tempered in the early morning.

She had contemplated life so long it had become indifferent to her.

He was young and ardent in a hundred happy ways.

There was Manderley, our Manderley, secretive and silent as it had always been, the gray stone shining in the moonlight of my dream ...

It was unlike anything I had ever known. I had no feeling, no pain.

Why this man should love that woman, what queer chemical mix-up in our blood draws us to one another, who can tell?

There was nothing quite so shaming, so degrading as a marriage that had failed.

There was something rather blousy about roses in full bloom, something shallow and raucous, like women with untidy hair

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

But a lonely man is an unnatural man, and soon comes to perplexity. From perplexity to fantasy. From fantasy to madness.

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.

I had never looked more youthful, I had never felt so old.

Time could not wreck the perfect symmetry of those walls, nor the site itself, a jewel in the hollow of a hand.

All autobiography is self-indulgent.

You have only to look at his eyes. He's still in hell...

Nature had come into her own again and, little by little, in her stealthy, insidious way had encroached upon the drive with long, tenacious fingers.

the rank and melancholy smell of charred wet wood and sodden leaves coming towards me on a wisp of air.

We're not meant for happiness, you and I.

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.

Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.

A bad workman blames his tools.

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

Women want love to be a novel. Men, a short story.

I could not ask for forgiveness for something I had not done. As scapegoat, I could only bear the fault.

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.

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

Resignation brings its own reward

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

There is no going back in life, no return, no second chance. I cannot call back the spoken word or the accomplished deed.

reader is back in the

The house was a sepulcher, our fear and suffering lay buried in the ruins. There would be no resurrection.

No, Mary had no illusions about romance. Falling in love was a pretty name for it, that was all.

She laughed because she must, and because he made her;

Life and death do not wait for legal action.

Maxim's voice, clear and strong, Will someone take my wife outside?She is going to faint.

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

Because I believe there is nothing so self-destroying, and no emotion quite so despicable, as jealousy.

But in future keep the things that hurt to myself alone. They can be my secret indulgence.

I wonder ... when it was that the world first went amiss, and men forgot how to live and to love and to be happy.

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

Anger and jealousy were things that could be conquered.

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

The point is, life has to be endured, and lived. But how to live it is the problem.

You're all wounded and hurt and torn inside.

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

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.

I don't mind. I like being alone.

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.

An empty house can be as lonely as a full hotel" he said at length."The trouble is that it is less impersonal.

I held out my arms to him and he came to me like a child.

You understand now ... how simple life becomes when things like mirrors are forgotten.

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

As I stood there,hushed and still,I could swear that the house was not an empty shell but lived and breathed as it had lived before.

Will you look into my eyes and tell me that you love me now?

It's so much easier to think out vaguely in my head than to set it down in words.

Her dullness made her own punishment.

F we killed women for their tongues all men would be murderers.

She has done for me at last, Rachel my torment

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

It doesn't make for sanity, does it, living with the devil.

You see,' she said, snapping the top, and walking down the stairs, 'you are so very different from Rebecca

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

Richard turned and saw me. And as he looked at me it was as if my whole heart moved over in my body and was mine no longer

He's made his own hell and there's no one but himself to thank for it.

Mullioned windows reflecting the green lawns and the terrace.

We've got a bond in common, you and I. We are both alone in the world.

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

Dead men tell no tales, Mary.

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

I was like a little scrubby schoolboy with a passion for a sixth-form prefect, and he kinder, and far more inaccessible.

I was aware of a sense of freedom, as though I had no responsibilities at all.

A man's jealousy is like a child's, fitful and foolish, without depth. A woman's jealousy is adult, which is very different.

And he went on eating his marmalade as though everything were natural.

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

Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again.

We only become aware of hot discomfort when others are made awkward for our sakes

Watch that boy. He's going to startle somebody someday.

It was disturbing, like an enchanted place. I had not thought it could be as beautiful as this

One of my favorite first sentences of a
book is from Rebecca, Last night I dreamt
I went to Manderley again.

Life was a series of greetings and farewells, one was always saying good-bye to something, to someone.

Because I want to; because I must; because now and forever more this is where I belong to be.

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

He was my secret property. Preserved for me alone...

People who travel are always fugitives.

You have blotted out the past for me, far more effectively than all the bright lights of Monte Carlo.

But fate and circumstance had made me no more than a shadow in his life, a phantom of what might have been

I did so obediently, and waited for her approval.

With Rebecca we enter a world of dreams and daydreams, but they always threaten to tip over into nightmare.

We are all ghosts of yesterday, and the phantom of tomorrow awaits us alike in sunshine or in shadow, dimly perceived at times, never entirely lost.

I thought how little we know about the feelings of old people.

I wanted to go back again, to recapture the moment that had gone, and then it came to me that if we did it would not be the same (...)

Boredom is a pleasing antidote for fear

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

- because just by hating it's possible to be purified from love, just with the sword, with the fire..

The inevitable lorgnette, the enemy to other people's privacy.

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

People who mattered could not take the humdrum world. But this was not the world, it was enchantment; and all of it was mine.

Living as we do in an age of noise and bluster, success is now measured accordingly. We must all be seen, and heard, and on the air.