Daphne Du Maurier Quotes

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

All autobiography is self-indulgent.

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

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

Here was the freedom I desired, long sought-for, not yet known Freedom to write, to walk, to wander, freedom to climb hills, to pull a boat, to be alone.

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.

A bad workman blames his tools.

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.

Boredom is a pleasing antidote for fear

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

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

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

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

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

How simple life becomes when things like mirrors are forgotten.

...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.

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

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.

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

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.

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.

...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.

... and through it all and afterwards they would be together, making their own world where nothing mattered but the things they could give to one another, the loveliness, the silence, and the peace.

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

I believe there is a theory that men and women emerge finer and stronger after suffering, an that to advance in this or any world we must endure ordeal by fire." (From Rebecca)

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

People who travel are always fugitives.

I thought of all those heroines of fiction who looked pretty when they cried, and what a contrast I must make with a blotched and swollen face, and red rims to my eyes.

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

Dead men tell no tales, Mary.

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.