184 Quotes by Daphne Du Maurier

We are all ghosts of yesterday, and the phantom of tomorrow awaits us alike in sunshine or in shadow, dimly perceived at times, never entirely lost.

They 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 then—how a careless word would linger, becoming a fiery stigma, and how a look, a glance over a shoulder, branded themselves as things eternal.

But luxury has never appealed to me, I like simple things, books, being alone, or with somebody who understands.

Happiness happens when you fit with your life, when you fit so harmoniously that whatsoever you are doing is your joy. Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.

Boredom is a pleasing antidote for fear.

If you think I’m one of those people who try to be funny at breakfast you’re wrong. I’m invariably ill-tempered in the early morning.

And I don’t like books which are full of name dropping.

Watch that boy. He’s going to startle somebody someday.

What about the hero of The House on the Strand? What did it mean when he dropped the telephone at the end of the book? I don’t really know, but I rather think he was going to be paralysed for life. Don’t you?