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

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?

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.

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

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.

...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.

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, a glance over a shoulder, branded themselves as things eternal.