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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 27e8594 | You forget, those things were easy for me. I belonged to both of them." Niall pushed his cup back on the tray. "What a bloody thing to say," he said, and he got up and lit another cigarette." | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| 174ece2 | She had the cold, angry face that spelled trouble, the face that sent servants flying, stage managers running for their lives, and ourselves to whatever distant room we might possess. | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| 6d4962b | There was no yesterday and no tomorrow; fear had been slung aside, and shame forgotten. We were all together--Pappy and Mama; Maria and Niall and Celia--we were all happy, with so many people looking at us, we were all enjoying ourselves. It was a game that we played, a game that we understood. We were the Delaneys. And we were giving a party | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| dd9070d | Soon we won't be children anymore. We shall be like Them. | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| a324383 | The fall was followed by a wail of anguish, penetrating to the dressing room behind. "See to baby, Truda," Mama must have said, cool and composed, knowing that if the child had been crushed beneath the great chandelier of the theater it would only mean one less to take around," | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| 5e59bdb | And she passed through the stage door and was inside the theater. Her heart was still beating fast, and her hands were burning, but she felt steadier suddenly, the feeling of panic had gone from her. It was because she was inside the theater | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| 247c1c2 | It's queer," she said, "but I don't feel this is happening to me at all. This is some other person going through my day. It's a dreadful feeling. I can't explain it" | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| 92c617f | He had no answer to that, or to any of her thoughts, and the smile that hovered a moment at the corner of her mouth and went as swiftly--it happened now, in her pretence of sleep--had no connection with him, or with his feelings, or with their life together. It was remote, the smile of someone he had never known. | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| 71ff36c | Did you think that?" said Maria. "So did I. Oh, Niall... if I ever marry and have a baby, will you have it for me?" "It would be one way of getting famous, anyway," said Niall." | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| ec2104d | Her uncle had ridden away on the moors somewhere, and a sense of freedom possessed her whenever he was gone. | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| addedbe | H'mph," growled the squire, "that's a damned nuisance. I wanted a word or two with Mr. Joss Merlyn. Now look here, my good woman, your precious husband may have bought Jamaica Inn behind my back, in his blackguardly fashion, and we'll not go into that again now, but one thing I won't stand for, and that's having all my land hereabouts made a byword for everything that's damnable and dishonest round the countryside." | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| 906edf6 | The waiters were getting tired, and very bored. The Head Waiter came again and pushed the bill on a plate, neatly folded, under Pappy's eyes. "What's this?" said Pappy. "Somebody want my autograph? Who's got a pencil? Anyone got a pencil so that I can sign my autograph?" The waiter coughed. He avoided Celia's eyes. "It's the bill, Pappy," whispered Celia. "The waiter wants you to pay the bill." | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| 9bebb4c | his warm eyes that made her heart feel daft like a bleating sheep. | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| 201205e | I do lie about," she said, "from time to time. The trouble is I go off everyone so quickly. I soon get bored." "Bored with the things they say? Or with the things they do?" "With the things they do. I never listen to the things they say" | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| 5b2b1fb | Mary Rose that did it. Mary Rose was a country girl. Always hiding up apple trees, and then disappearing on the island. She was a ghost, and Charles fell in love with the ghost." "What did you fall in love with?" asked Niall. "As I was being Mary Rose, I fell in love with Simon," said Maria. "And Charles was my idea of Simon. Quiet, dependable, devoted. Besides, at that particular time there was no one much around. And all those flowers." | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| 75b2b59 | There was something strangely peaceful about the house, something very rare and difficult to define. It was like a house in an old tale, discovered by the hero one evening in midsummer; there should be a barrier of thorns about it through which he must cut his way with a knife, and then a galaxy of flowers growing in profusion, with monstrous blooms untended by human hand. | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| 2b96ea5 | he stood on the balcony because the sounds and the smells of Paris came to his ears and his nostrils and lost themselves inside his head and came out again as tunes | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| 933921b | 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. Today, wrapped in the complacent armor of approaching middle age, the infinitesimal pricks of day by day brush one lightly and are soon forgotten, but then - how a careless word would linger, becoming a fiery stigma, and how a look, a g.. | wisdom | Daphne du Maurier | |
| 19f0bd5 | He was like a schoolmaster after all. It was just as she had feared. He was now going to make a fuss about her drawings, and write to Pappy, and worry Pappy, and say that time must be set aside for her to work, and everything would become a performance, and a ritual, and be difficult. Drawing would become a burden instead of an escape | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| 0889eea | A ce moment-la, Maxim me regarda enfin. Il me regarda pour la premiere fois de la soiree et, dans ses yeux, je lus un message d'adieu. C'etait comme s'il se penchait au bastingage d'un navire, et que je me tenais en contrebas sur le quai. Il y avait d'autres gens qui touchaient son epaule et qui touchaient la mienne, mais nous ne les remarquions pas. Nous ne nous parlions pas et ne nous helions pas, car le vent et la distance emportaient le.. | daphne-du-maurier français quote rebecca | Daphne du Maurier | |
| 8ae92d5 | Charles said, "I haven't looked at the Acrostic. A word of nine letters in the crossword caught my attention." "Oh, what was that?" "An invertebrate animal preying upon the body of another animal." Niall struck the first chord on the piano. "A parasite," he said." | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| ef70519 | You have never lived anywhere else," he said, "and you are not an individual at all, you're just a hotch-potch of every character you've ever acted. Your mood and your personality change with each new part that comes along. There is no such woman as Maria, there never has been. Even your children know it. And that's why they are fascinated by you, for two days only, and then go running up to the nursery to Polly, because Polly is real, and .. | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| 2d0efc6 | But the people enjoy watching the dog," he said swiftly, trying to divert Charles. "That's why they go to the circus, for distraction. Maria supplies the same drug in the theater, and I give it in large doses to all the errand-boys who whistle my songs. I think you've got hold of the wrong word. We're pedlars, hawking our wares--not parasites." | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| c603dd7 | It was Charles who called us the parasites. The way he said it was surprising, and sudden; he was one of those quiet reserved sort of men, not given to talking much or stating his opinion, unless upon the most ordinary facts of day by day, so that his outburst--coming, as it did, towards the end of the long, wet Sunday afternoon, when we had none of us done anything but read the papers and yawn and stretch before the fire--had the force of .. | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| 4ff625f | It was some personal friend of the landlord's, who had no wish to meddle in his evening's business, and would not show himself even to the landlord's wife. | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| a951f02 | I know I must seem unsympathetic and cold, but this is the nineteenth century, you know, and men don't murder one another without reason. I believe I have as much right to drive you on the King's highway as your uncle himself. Having gone so far, don't you think you had better let me hear the rest of your story? What is your name, and how long have you been living at Jamaica Inn? | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| 17a9d2c | I looked at him over my glass of citronade. It was not easy to explain my father and usually I never talked about him. He was my secret property. Preserved for me alone, much as Manderley was preserved for my neighbour. I had no wish to introduce him casually over a table in a Monte Carlo restaurant. There was a strange air of unreality about that luncheon, and looking back upon it now it is invested for me with a curious glamour. There wa.. | intimacy sharing | Daphne du Maurier | |
| 1856260 | 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 clash of thought or of opinion makes a barrier between us. | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| da2c460 | We can never go back again, that much is certain. The past is still too close to us. The things we have tried to forget and put behind us would stir again, | the-past | Daphne du Maurier | |
| 1e774b7 | Bitterness goes with people when they die. | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| fa6ca04 | He was always talking nowadays, thought Celia, of the things he might have done. The houses they should have lived in, the countries they could have visited. It was a pity, he had said only that morning, that he had never taken up swimming really seriously. With his physique, he told Celia, he could easily have swum the Channel. He should have chucked singing directly Mama died, and gone in for long-distance swimming. He could have beaten a.. | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| 7d73f5c | In two minutes she would have forgotten all about having asked Celia for the day, and would be planning something else. If only Maria lived a little closer, Celia could have shared the responsibility of Caroline. It would only mean two children to look after instead of one. Because Pappy was a child. He needed humoring, and coaxing, and taking care of in much the same way as a child. | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| f219d77 | It was strange how a person came full circle. How a man was once a baby and a boy, and then a lover and a father, and now a child again. It was strange that once she had been a little girl, climbing onto Pappy's knee, burying her head in his shoulder, clinging to him for protection, and he had been young, and strong, and like a god. And now it was all over, the purpose of his life. The strength had ebbed away. The man who had lived, and lov.. | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| 6121ca8 | They've been drinking too," said Pappy, examining the tooth-glass. "Cognac, judging by the smell. I never knew my daughter drank." "She doesn't," said Celia, smoothing Pappy's bed. "She always has orangeade. Unless it's a first night, when she has champagne." "Then it must be Niall," said Pappy. "Someone--and who can it be but Niall?--has been pouring cognac into my tooth-glass. I shall attack Freada. Freada is responsible." He filled the t.. | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| dcd4ed7 | Something we always want and never have. Something that is forever out of reach. | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| c6a0b94 | They went and stood together by the bed. They had wrapped Pappy in one of the hospital nightshirts, and it was somehow shocking and rather terrible to see Pappy dressed in this way, not in his own pajamas, not in his own bed. His breathing was heavy and queer. "If he must die," said Celia, "I would want him to die at home. He has always been afraid of hospitals. He would not want it to happen here." They looked at her strangely, the doctor .. | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| 68b80f6 | She put back the receiver and lifted it again. She asked for the number of Niall's room at the theater. She went on ringing. And surely, she thought with sudden hopelessness and a new kind of dead despair, they can't both be out and away, now at this minute in my life, when I need both of them so much? Surely one of them will come, surely one of them will help me? Because I don't want to go home alone. I don't want to be in the house alone,.. | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| df3c5d1 | If the flower of my generation had not been blown to bits in the war they would have brought it back again. Now it's too late. So few of us are left." The bride at St. George's" | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| 6c3fd86 | Sir,' or whatever one does say to God, 'here I am, Maria, and I am the lowest form of life,' that would be honest. And honesty counts for something, doesn't it?" "One doesn't know," said Niall. "That's the frightful thing. One just does not know what goes down well with God. He may think honesty is a form of bragging." "In that case I'm sunk," said Maria. "I think you're sunk, anyway," said Niall" | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| 39d7f93 | Think of the unkind things we have forgotten," said Niall. "Those are the ones that will be totted up against us. I sometimes wake up in the early morning and go quite cold thinking of all the things I must have done and can't remember." "Pappy must have taught you that," said Celia. "Pappy had a fearful theory that when we die we go to a theater, and we sit down and see the whole of our lives re-acted before us. And nothing is omitted. Not.. | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| ccfe3b8 | He argued the course of direction during the full seventy miles of the drive. The fact that his map was eighteenth century did not fluster him | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| 7fe5a79 | Charles was nowhere to be seen. Maria had to go to look for him. Celia's anxiety mounted. Pappy would never hang on until after six. He was like a baby with a bottle. He had to keep to his regular time for his whiskey or his whole system became disorganized. | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| 0c90140 | Maria stepped out of the telephone box. A policeman at the corner was watching her. Caroline was still crying. Maria turned and pushed the pram in the opposite direction from the policeman. You never knew. It might be against the law to leave a child to cry. | Daphne du Maurier | ||
| 7e96d9f | She had changed into another mourning gown, cut somewhat fuller than the other, and instead of a hat she had wound her black lace shawl about her hair for covering. She was talking to Wellington, her profile turned to me, and got some reason or other I remembered what she had said the night before about Ambrose teasing her, how he had told her once that she reeked of old Rome. I think I knew now what he meant. Her features were like those s.. | Daphne du Maurier |