I dragged myself to my feet, and with my hellhound in tow started off once more through the fastness of the wood, feeling, as the poet did before me, that my companion would be with me through the nights and through the days and down the arches of the years, and I should never be rid of him.

— Daphne du Maurier

I feel it's all wrong to be nervous," said Maria. "I feel its 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 worthwhile if you don't fight for it first, if you haven't a pain in your belly beforehand.

— Daphne du Maurier

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.

— Daphne du Maurier

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

— Daphne du Maurier

I held out my arms to him, and he came to me like a child.

— Daphne du Maurier

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.

— Daphne du Maurier

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.

— Daphne du Maurier

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.

— Daphne du Maurier

It embarrassed her, as a child, to think that her father had fallen in love, or, if men must love, then it should have been someone else, someone dark, mysterious and profoundly clever, not an ordinary person who was impatient for no reason and cross when one was late for lunch.

— Daphne du Maurier

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.

— Daphne du Maurier