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.
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.
Truth was something intangible, unseen, which sometimes we stumbled upon and did not recognize, but was found, and held, and understood only by old people near their death, or sometimes by the very pure, the very young.
Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.
We’ve got a bond in common, you and I. We are both alone in the world.
Women want love to be a novel. Men, a short story.
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.
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.
The moment of crisis had come, and I must face it. My old fears, my diffidence, my shyness, my hopeless sense of inferiority, must be conquered now and thrust aside. If I failed now I should fail forever.
There was something rather blousy about roses in full bloom, something shallow and raucous, like women with untidy hair
how lacking in intuition men could be in persuading themselves that mending some stranger’s socks, and attending to his comfort, could content a woman…
I have no talent for making new friends, but oh such genius for fidelity to old ones.
But a lonely man is an unnatural man, and soon comes to perplexity. From perplexity to fantasy. From fantasy to madness.
Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.
I thought of all those heroines of fiction who looked pretty when they cried, and what a contrast I must make with a blotched and swollen face, and red rims to my eyes.
This house sheltered us, we spoke, we loved within those walls. That was yesterday. To-day we pass on, we see it no more, and we are different, changed in some infinitesimal way. We can never be quite the same again.
She had to live in this bright, red gabled house with the nurse until it was time for her to die… I thought how little we know about the feelings of old people. Children we understand, their fears and hopes and make-believe.
I know that age, it’s a particularly obstinate one, and a thousand bogies won’t make you fear the future. A pity we can’t change over.
I held out my arms to him and he came to me like a child.
I would have gone too but I wanted to come straight back to you.I kept thinking of you, waiting here, all by yourself, not knowing what was going to happen.
Maxim’s voice, clear and strong, “Will someone take my wife outside?She is going to faint.
…The fact that it’s black transforms it. Has the same effect on women that black stockings have on men.
A familiar name on its own, however, does not carry its bearer far unless the talent is there, and the will to work.
Because I believe there is nothing so self-destroying, and no emotion quite so despicable, as jealousy.
The sea, like a crinkled chart, spread to the horizon, and lapped the sharp outline of the coast, while the houses were white shells in a rounded grotto, pricked here and there by a great orange sun.
Looking from the window at the fantastic light and colour of my glittering fairy-world of fact that holds no tenderness, no quietude, I long suddenly for peace, for understanding.
Every moment was a precious thing, having in it the essence of finality.
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.
Writers should be read – but neither seen nor heard.