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 always be the same. And she and I could not fight. She was to strong for me.
Daphne du MaurierWriting every book is like a purge; at the end of it one is empty ... like a dry shell on the beach, waiting for the tide to come in again.
Daphne du MaurierIf you think I'm one of the people who try to be funny at breakfast you're wrong. I'm invariably illtempered in the early morning.
Daphne du MaurierThe trouble is, walking in Venice becomes compulsive once you start. Just over the next bridge, you say, and then the next one beckons.
Daphne du MaurierThey 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 thenโhow a careless word would linger, becoming a fiery stigma, and how a look, a glance over a shoulder, branded themselves as things eternal.
Daphne du Maurier