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fe9200b
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Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.
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first-sentence
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Daphne Du Maurier |
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44410e2
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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.
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fiction
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Daphne du Maurier |
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259eb5d
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Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.
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Daphne Du Maurier |
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0f90f6b
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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.
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life
trials
growth
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Daphne Du Maurier |
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d641134
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I wish I was a woman of about thirty-six dressed in black satin with a string of pearls.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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2f43cd7
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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.
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truth
social-anxiety
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Daphne du Maurier |
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83990f8
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Men are simpler than you imagine my sweet child. But what goes on in the twisted, tortuous minds of women would baffle anyone.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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e8d910c
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We can never go back again, that much is certain. The past is still close to us. The things we have tried to forget and put behind us would stir again, and that sense of fear, of furtive unrest, struggling at length to blind unreasoning panic - now mercifully stilled, thank God - might in some manner unforeseen become a living companion as it had before.
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past
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Daphne Du Maurier |
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fb59fb9
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I wanted to go on sitting there, not talking, not listening to the others, keeping the moment precious for all time, because we were peaceful all of us, we were content and drowsy even as the bee who droned above our heads. In a little while it would be different, there would come tomorrow, and the next day and another year. And we would be changed perhaps, never sitting quite like this again. Some of us would go away, or suffer, or die, th..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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64a37c6
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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."
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marriage
relationships
humor
proposal
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Daphne du Maurier |
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06397f8
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We're not meant for happiness, you and I.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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8354960
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I wondered why it was that places are so much lovelier when one is alone.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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385dd18
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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. They are not brave, the days when we are twenty-one. They are full of little cowardices, little fears without foundation, and one is so easily bruised, so swiftly wounded, one falls to the first barbed word. To-day, wrapped in the complacent armour of approaching middle age, the infinitesimal pricks of day by day brus..
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youth
love
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Daphne du Maurier |
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5ec6716
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A dreamer, I walked enchanted, and nothing held me back.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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3d291df
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I wondered why it was that places are so much lovelier when one is alone. How commonplace and stupid it would be if I had a friend now, sitting beside me, someone I had known at school, who would say: "By-the-way, I saw old Hilda the other day. You remember her, the one who was so good at tennis. She's married, with two children." And the bluebells beside us unnoticed, and the pigeons overhead unheard. I did not want anyone with me. Not eve..
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solitude
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Daphne du Maurier |
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3a8d4ce
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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.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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6a7456f
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Because I want to; because I must; because now and forever more this is where I belong to be.
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Daphne Du Maurier |
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6730a41
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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.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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4897376
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Every moment was a precious thing, having in it the essence of finality.
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finality
goodbye
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Daphne du Maurier |
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9c69cae
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They are not brave, the days when we are twenty-one. They are full of little cowardices, little fears without foundation, and one is so easily bruised, so swiftly wounded, one falls to the first barbed word. To-day, wrapped in the complacent armour of approaching middle age, the infinitesimal pricks of day by day brush one but lightly and are soon forgotten, but then--how a careless word would linger, becoming a fiery stigma, and how a look..
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youth
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Daphne du Maurier |
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36da06f
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The point is, life has to be endured, and lived. But how to live it is the problem.
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my-cousin-rachel
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Daphne du Maurier |
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aa94d13
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It wouldn't make for sanity would it, living with the devil.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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ccfcc3f
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Will you look into my eyes and tell me that you love me now?
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Daphne du Maurier |
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013fa9a
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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.
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Daphne Du Maurier |
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dcc3507
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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.
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social-anxiety
inferiority
shyness
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Daphne du Maurier |
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90434eb
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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.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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8a77b7b
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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.
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life
home
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Daphne du Maurier |
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2338770
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I had build up false pictures in my mind and sat before them. I had never had the courage to demand the truth.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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ce4e4d9
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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.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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98437e7
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We've got a bond in common, you and I. We are both alone in the world.
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romance
bond
lonely
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Daphne du Maurier |
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2a9c542
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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.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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e6f1ed5
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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.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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757c6bc
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The child destined to be a writer is vulnerable to every wind that blows. Now warm, now chill, next joyous, then despairing, the essence of his nature is to escape the atmosphere about him, no matter how stable, even loving. No ties, no binding chains, save those he forges for himself. Or so he thinks. But escape can be delusion, and what he is running from is not the enclosing world and its inhabitants, but his own inadequate self that fea..
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Daphne Du Maurier |
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90ce991
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She knew that this was happiness, this was living as she had always wished to live.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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c82d169
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He belonged to a walled city of the fifteenth century, a city of narrow, cobbled streets, and thin spires, where the inhabitants wore pointed shoes and worsted hose. His face was arresting, sensitive, medieval in some strange inexplicable way, and I was reminded of a portrait seen in a gallery I had forgotten where, of a certain Gentleman Unknown. Could one but rob him of his English tweeds, and put him in black, with lace at his throat and..
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Daphne Du Maurier |
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8bc54a7
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I held out my arms to him and he came to me like a child.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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4f3b706
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And this then, that I am feeling now, is the hell that comes with love, the hell and the damnation and the agony beyond all enduring, because after the beauty and the loveliness comes the sorrow and the pain.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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180226e
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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.
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maxim-de-winter
rebecca
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Daphne du Maurier |
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3af1ce2
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There is no going back in life, no return, no second chance. I cannot call back the spoken word or the accomplished deed.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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f451711
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I don't mind. I like being alone.
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rebecca
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Daphne du Maurier |
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a17db2b
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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.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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0cc3f7c
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They were all fitting into place, the jig-saw pieces. The odd strained shapes that I had tried to piece together with my fumbling fingers and they had never fitted. Frank's odd manner when I spoke about Rebecca. Beatrice and her rather diffident negative attitude. The silence that I had always taken for sympathy and regret was a silence born of shame and embarrassment. It seemed incredible to me now that I had never understood. I wondered h..
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Daphne Du Maurier |
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8e5e6d0
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We all of us have our particular devil who ruses us and torments us, and we must give battle in the end.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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82261d6
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But I have had enough melodrama in this life, and would willingly give my five senses if they could ensure us our present peace and security. Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind. Of course we have our moments of depression; but there are other moments too, when time, unmeasured by the clock, runs on into eternity and, catching his smile, I know we are together, we march in unison, no flash..
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Daphne du Maurier |