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573c41d
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She had to live in this bright, red gabled house with the nurse until it was time for her to die... I thought how little we know about the feelings of old people. Children we understand, their fears and hopes and make-believe.
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youth
elderly
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Daphne du Maurier |
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84ffa84
|
You understand now... how simple life becomes when things like mirrors are forgotten.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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47353c6
|
as the slow sea sucked at the shore and then withdrew, leaving the strip of seaweed bare and the shingle churned, the sea birds raced and ran upon the beaches. Then that same impulse to flight seized upon them too. Crying, whistling, calling, they skimmed the placid sea and left the shore. Make haste, make speed, hurry and begone; yet where, and to what purpose? The restless urge of autumn, unsatisfying, sad, had put a spell upon them and t..
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winter
seabirds
birds
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Daphne du Maurier |
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3d3649b
|
I could fight with the living but I could not fight the dead. If there was some woman in London that Maxim loved, someone he wrote to, visited, dined with, slept with, I could fight her. We would stand on common ground. I should not be afraid. Anger and jealousy were things that could be conquered. One day the woman would grow old or tired or different, and Maxim would not love her anymore. But Rebecca would never grow old. Rebecca would al..
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rebecca
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Daphne du Maurier |
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d185eb0
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We were dreamers, both of us, unpractical, reserved, full of great theories never put to test, and like all dreamers, asleep to the waking world. Disliking our fellow men, we craved affection; but shyness kept impulse dormant until the heart was touched. When that happened the heavens opened, and we felt, the pair of us, that we have the whole wealth of the universe to give. We would have both survived, had we been other men.
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love
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Daphne du Maurier |
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d104a87
|
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.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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596f756
|
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.
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Daphne Du Maurier |
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3d3ee78
|
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.
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sandwiches
cake
meals
tea
food
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Daphne du Maurier |
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a3cf183
|
We can see the film stars of yesterday in yesterday's films, hear the voices of poest and singers on a record, keep the plays of dead dramatists upon our bookshelves, but the actor who holds his audience captive for one brief moment upon a lighted stage vanishes forever when the curtain falls.
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plays
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Daphne du Maurier |
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94c43e5
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And all this, she thought, is only momentary, is only a fragment in time that will never come again, for yesterday already belongs to the past and is ours no longer, and tomorrow is an unknown thing that may be hostile. This is our day, our moment, the sun belongs to us, and the wind, and the sea, and the men for'ard there singing on the deck. This day is forever a day to be held and cherished, because in it we shall have lived, and loved, ..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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7afc4fb
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What degradation lay in being young.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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cc38b82
|
Watch that boy. He's going to startle somebody someday.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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86fa2e2
|
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 so full of little cowardices, little fears without foundation, and one is so easily bruised, so swiftly wounded, one falls to the first barbed word.
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young-love
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Daphne du Maurier |
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3e51712
|
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.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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c4d82cf
|
No, Mary had no illusions about romance. Falling in love was a pretty name for it, that was all.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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0b5982a
|
When she smiled it was as though she embraced the world.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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227e59c
|
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.
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success
notoriety
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Daphne du Maurier |
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14aa83b
|
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?
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Daphne du Maurier |
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d792864
|
We were like two performers in a play, but we were divided, we were not acting with one another. We had to endure it alone, we had to put up this show, this miserable, sham performance for the sake of all these people I did not know and did not want to see again.
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theatre
mrs-de-winter
rebecca
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Daphne du Maurier |
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457b760
|
I wondered how it could be that two people who had loved could yet have such a misconception of each other and, with a common grief, grow far apart. There must be something in the nature of love between a man and a woman that drove them to torment and suspicion.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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7264c30
|
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.
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sleep
somnambulists
trance
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Daphne du Maurier |
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5187af4
|
She had contemplated life so long it had become indifferent to her.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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8a9d29c
|
I could not ask for forgiveness for something I had not done. As scapegoat, I could only bear the fault.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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7d40d60
|
I would not be young again, if you offered me the world. But then I'm prejudiced.' 'You talk,' I said, 'as if you were ninety-nine.' 'For a woman I very nearly am,' she said. 'I'm thirty five.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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a72f08e
|
An empty house can be as lonely as a full hotel" he said at length."The trouble is that it is less impersonal."
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Daphne du Maurier |
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dbf9dcb
|
Packing up. The nagging worry of departure. When shutting drawers and flinging wide an hotel wardrobe, or the impersonal shelves of a furnished villa, I am aware of sadness, of a sense of loss. Here, I say, we have lived, we have been happy. This has been ours, however brief the time. Though two nights only have been spent beneath a roof, yet we leave something of ourselves behind. Nothing material, not a hair-pin on a dressing-table, not a..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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c214265
|
For love, as she knew it now, was something without shame and without reserve, the possession of two people who had no barrier between them, and no pride; whatever happened to him would happen to her too, all feeling, all movement, all sensation of body and of mind.
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love
togetherness
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Daphne du Maurier |
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8d7a6c2
|
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 clash of thought or of opinion makes a barrier between us.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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0936e9c
|
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...
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women
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Daphne du Maurier |
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2fd47e3
|
I wonder ... when it was that the world first went amiss, and men forgot how to live and to love and to be happy.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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8357c97
|
I felt rather exhausted, and wondered, rather shocked at my callous thought, why old people were sometimes such a strain. Worse than young children or puppies because one had to be polite.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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fb03a85
|
She has done for me at last, Rachel my torment.
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suspicion
suspense
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Daphne du Maurier |
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31a6715
|
I was following a phantom in my mind, whose shadowy form had taken shape at last. Her features were blurred, her coloring indistinct, the setting of her eyes and the texture of her hair was still uncertain, still to be revealed. She had beauty that endured, and a smile that was not forgotten. Somewhere her voice still lingered, and the memory of her words.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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e6c761c
|
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.
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monte-verita
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Daphne du Maurier |
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4cb3264
|
You had to endure something yourself before it touched you.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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aa43919
|
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.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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265d2b8
|
I thought how little we know about the feelings of old people. Children we understand, their fears and hopes and make-believe. I was a child yesterday. I had not forgotten. But Maxim's grandmother, sitting there in her shawl with her poor blind eyes, what did she feel, what was she thinking? Did she know that Beatrice was yawning and glancing at her watch? Did she guess that we had come to visit her because we felt it right, it was a duty, ..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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a0ee536
|
He took her face in his hands and kissed it, and she saw that he was laughing. "When you're an old maid in mittens down at Helford, you'll remember that," he said, "and it will have to last you to the end of your days. '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."
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Daphne du Maurier |
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f445056
|
Only a lover of animals will understand the sudden feeling of loss, of emptiness, and the intuitive bond which exists between man and dog, has always existed from the beginning and will, please God, continue to the end.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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1290cd7
|
There was something rather blousy about roses in full bloom, something shallow and raucous, like women with untidy hair
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women
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Daphne du Maurier |
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348b09c
|
From the very first, I knew that it would be so...I smiled to myself, and said, "That -- and none other."
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Daphne du Maurier |
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522a700
|
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.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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b30f034
|
A familiar name on its own, however, does not carry its bearer far unless the talent is there, and the will to work.
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talent
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
5ea04ef
|
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. The flowers that died would bloom again another year, the same birds build their nests, the same trees blossom. That old quiet moss smell would linger in the air, ..
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manderley
eternal
peace
|
Daphne du Maurier |