10 Daphne Du Maurier Quotes that Make Rebecca Timeless

Born on 13th May 1907 Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning was an English author and playwright, best known for gothic novel Rebecca. Published in 1938, Rebecca has never been out of print and sold over 2 million copies in the first thirty years after publication. The novel opens with the famous line “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” and it won the National Book Award in the US in the year of its release.

Through the years the novel has been successfully adapted for radio, television, film and theatre and is still much loved with readers today. If you haven’t read it, you really should.

Here are my favourite quotes from the book that I think show why Rebecca is a timeless classic.

“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.”

I am glad it cannot happen twice, the fever of first love. For it is a fever, and a burden, too, whatever the poets may say.

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 believe there is a theory that men and women emerge finer and stronger after suffering, and that to advance in this or any world we must endure ordeal by fire.

I wondered why it was that places are so much lovelier when one is
alone.

We’re not meant for happiness, you and I.

Men are simpler than you imagine my sweet child. But what goes on in the twisted, tortuous minds of women would baffle anyone.

Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.

I could fight with the living but I could not fight the dead.

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.

Rebecca really is a fantastic book from start to finish, and Daphne Du Maurier’s other works are well worth checking out too. If you’d like to find out more, you can read our Rebecca reviews here.