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.

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.

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.

The road to Manderley lay ahead. There was no moon. The sky above our heads was inky black. But the sky on the horizon was not dark at all. It was shot with crimson, like a splash of blood. And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea.

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

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

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