Daphne du Maurier

“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.”

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

“Writers should be read - but neither seen nor heard.”

“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 a...”

“We've got a bond in common, you and I. We are both alone in the world.”

“He had the face of one who walks in his sleep, and for a wild moment the idea came to me that perhaps he was not normal, not altogether sane. There were people who had trances, I had surely...”

“The world of today asleep, and my world not awakened, or not as yet, until the drug possessed me.”

“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.”

“I wanted to go on sitting there, not talking, not listening to the others, keeping the moment precious for all time, because we were peaceful all of us, we were content and drowsy even as th...”

“We know one another. This is the present. There is no past and no future. Here I am washing my hands, and the cracked mirror shows me to myself, suspended as it were, in time; this is me, th...”

“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...”

“All autobiography is self-indulgent.”