Daphne du Maurier
22 quotes
Biography
Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning, was an English novelist, biographer and playwright. Her parents were actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and his wife, actress Muriel Beaumont.
"But luxury has never appealed to me, I like simple things, books, being alone, or with somebody who understands."
"Women want love to be a novel. Men, a short story."
"If only there could be an invention that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again."
"Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind."
"I suppose sooner or later in the life of everyone comes a moment of trial. We all of us have our particular devil who rides us and torments us, and we must give battle in the end."
"I wondered how many people there were in the world who suffered, and continued to suffer, because they could not break out from their own web of shyness and reserve, and in their blindness and folly built up a great distorted wall in front of them that hid the truth."
"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."
"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."
"The Menace, in movie language, and especially among women, means a heart-throb, a lover, someone with wide shoulders and no hips. A Menace does not have long lashes or a profile; he is always ugly, generally with a crooked nose and if possible a scar; his voice is deep; and he does not say much. When he does speak, the scriptwriters give him short, terse snaps of dialogue, phrases like ‘Lady, take care!’, or ‘Break it up!’, or even just ‘Maybe’. The expression on the ugly face has to be dead-pan and give nothing away, so that sudden death or a woman’s passion leaves it unmoved."
"[As a child] I was always pretending to be someone else … historical characters, all those I invented for myself. I act even to this day. It's the old imagination working, a kind of make believe."
"My novels are what is known as popular and sell very well, but I am not a critic’s favourite, indeed I am generally dismissed with a sneer as a bestseller and not reviewed at all."
"I write about the black experience, because it's what I know. But I'm always talking about the human condition, what human beings feel and how we feel. Given these circumstances, a human being will react this way: he'll be happy, will weep, will celebrate, will fall. So my books are popular in Asia, in Africa, in Europe. Why would I, a black girl in the South, fall in love with Tolstoy or Dickens? I was Danton and Madame Defarge and all those people in A Tale of Two Cities. I was Daphne du Maurier and the Brontë sisters in a town where blacks were not allowed to cross the street. I was educated by those writers. Not about themselves and their people, but about me, what I could hope for."
"The seed of the story [Rebecca] lay in du Maurier’s jealousy of Jan Ricardo, the first fiancée of her husband. "I know that she came across one or two letters or cards, fairly sort of harmless things, where Jan did sign 'Jan Ricardo' with this wonderful great R," says Browning, flourishing his hand in the air. It is a portentous curlicue that is emulated in the book."
"I have no talent for making new friends, but oh such genius for fidelity to old ones."
"I love the stillness of a room, after a party. The chairs are moved, the cushions disarranged, everything is there to show that people enjoyed themselves; and one comes back to the empty room happy that it's over, happy to relax and say, 'Now we are alone again."
"I feel it's all wrong to be nervous," said Maria. "I feel it's lack of confidence. One ought to go right ahead, never minding.""Some people do," he said, "but they're the duds. They are the ones that win prizes at school, and you never hear of them again. Go on. Be nervous. Be ill. Be sick down the lavatory pan. It's part of your life from now on. You've got to go through with it. Nothing's worth while if you don't fight for it first, if you haven't a pain in your belly beforehand."
"Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard."
"Happiness is not a possession to be prized it is a quality of thought a state of mind."
"She could not separate success from peace of mind. The two must go together."
"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 and that sense of fear of furtive unrest... might in some manner unforeseen become a living companion as it had before."
"...The fact that it's black transforms it. Has the same effect on women that black stockings have on men."
"Writers should be read - but neither seen nor heard."