Rebecca Quotes
"Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again."
"Nature had come into her own again and, little by little, in her stealthy, insidious way had encroached upon the drive with long, tenacious fingers."
"Time could not wreck the perfect symmetry of those walls, nor the site itself, a jewel in the hollow of a hand."
"We can never go back again, that much is certain. The past is still too close to us."
"I suppose sooner or later in the life of everyone comes a moment of trial."
"Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind."
"I am glad it cannot happen twice, the fever of first love. For it is a fever, and a burden, too."
"Packing up. The nagging worry of departure. Lost keys, unwritten labels, tissue paper lying on the floor. I hate it all."
"The trouble is that it is less impersonal. All memories are bitter, and I prefer to ignore them."
"You can forget all I said to you this morning; that's all finished and done with."
"Four and a half more minutes to go. I shall never see him again."
"I love you so much. I’m terribly unhappy. This has never come to me before, and never will again."
"This was the last moment, the final good-bye had been attained."
"I’ve never thanked you properly for being so kind."
"We would waste the last moments laughing at a stranger, because we were already strangers to one another."
"He would go back to Manderley, of course, in a few weeks."
"I remember opening wide my window and leaning out, hoping the fresh morning air would blow away the telltale pink under the powder."
"I was sitting in Rebecca’s chair, I was leaning against Rebecca’s cushion."
"It was as though she had spoken words that were forbidden."
"I felt guilty, as though I were staying in somebody else’s house."
"Mrs. Danvers has collected the whole damned staff in the house and on the estate to welcome us."
"I was like a child brought to her first school."
"I saw the great stone hall, the wide doors open to the library."
"She’s an extraordinary character in many ways."
"I’m asking you to marry me, you little fool."
"I wanted to live there all my life. And I was leaving it today."
"I would have shown you this morning, but I believed you to be writing letters in the morning room."
"You have only to telephone through to my room, you know, when you want me."
"I wonder how you came to miss your way?"
"Yes, I said, not meeting her eyes. Yes, I came through a stone passage."
"Then you must have come up the back way, from the stone passage?"
"Frith will have taken them to the morning room."
"She was looking me up and down, as I had expected, but in a direct, straightforward fashion, not maliciously."
"Maxim’s very sunburnt; it hides a multitude of sins."
"I think it’s a pity you came back to Manderley so soon."
"I’ve scarcely seen anything of it yet; it’s beautiful, of course."
"You can’t possibly live in the country and not ride."
"I’m devoted to Maxim, you know, though we always bicker like cat and dog when we meet."
"Maxim tells me you only got back last night."
"I’m not the first to do it. This is Rebecca’s vase, this is Rebecca’s lilac."
"I have always had a childish love of parcels."
"It was nice of Beatrice. There was something rather sincere and pathetic about her going off to a shop in London and buying me these books because she knew I was fond of painting."
"I’m afraid of them. At least, not afraid, but…"
"I’m awfully sorry, darling, it was very careless of me. I can’t think how it happened."
"What a confounded nuisance," said Maxim; "that cupid is worth a hell of a lot. How I loathe servants’ rows too."
"I wonder if I did a very selfish thing in marrying you."
"You are my father and my brother and my son. All those things."
"I’m not like a between-maid," I said slowly, "I know I am, in lots of ways."
"I could not imagine it rough now, any more than I could imagine winter in summer."
"I wondered why it was that places are so much lovelier when one is alone."
"You’re not like the other one," he said.
"I suppose that’s why you married me," I said; "you knew I was dull and quiet and inexperienced, so that there would never be any gossip about me."
"I can fancy her there now from time to time. It’s almost as though I catch the sound of her dress sweeping the stairs as she comes down to dinner."
"Do you think the dead come back and watch the living?"
"Sometimes, when I walk along the corridor here, I fancy I hear her just behind me. That quick, light footstep."
"I wish I could lay my hands upon her face and take the years away."
"We were like two performers in a play, but we were divided, we were not acting with one another."
"I wished something would happen to make me look wiser, more mature."
"I did not recognize the face that stared at me in the glass."
"I wanted to go to Robert and stand beside him and say 'I know how you feel. I understand. I’ve done worse than you tonight.'"
"I watched his courtesy to his guests. He flung a word to one, a jest to another, a smile to a third, a call over his shoulder to a fourth, and no one but myself could know that every utterance he made, every movement, was automatic and the work of a machine."
"I can see her now, the prominent teeth, the gay spot of rouge placed high upon her cheek-bones, and her smile, vacant, happy, enjoying her evening."
"I can feel now the stiff, set smile on my face that did not match the misery in my eyes."
"I felt tired suddenly, and unable to cope."
"I lay back and closed my eyes, thankful for the cool white comfort of clean sheets."
"I wondered how long Maxim would be. The bed beside me looked stark and cold."
"I think I fell asleep a little after seven. It was broad daylight, I remember, there was no longer any pretence that the drawn curtains hid the sun."
"My little bedside clock ticked out the minutes one by one."
"I lay across my bed, my arms over my eyes, a strange, mad position and the least likely to bring sleep."
"I drank my cold tea, still blurred and stupid from my short heavy sleep."
"I was too young for Maxim, too inexperienced, and, more important still, I was not of his world."
"I thought of the youthful almost hysterical excitement and conceit with which I had gone into this marriage, imagining I would bring happiness to Maxim."
"I had come blundering like a poor fool on ground that was preserved."
"Rebecca, always Rebecca. Wherever I walked in Manderley, wherever I sat, even in my thoughts and in my dreams, I met Rebecca."
"The sun streamed into the room. The men had cleared the mess away from the rose garden."
"I stared at him, bewildered at first, then shocked, then rather sick."
"I killed her, I tell you. Our marriage was a farce from the very first."
"The beauty of Manderley that you see today, the Manderley that people talk about and photograph and paint, it's all due to her, to Rebecca."
"And so we lived, month after month, year after year. I accepted everything—because of Manderley."
"I warned her, and she shrugged her shoulders. ‘What the hell’s it got to do with you?’ she said."
"Dear, wretched Frank, who had not understood, who had always thought we were the normal happy married couple we pretended to be."
"I believe, in her funny abrupt, downright way she saw through her, guessed something was wrong."
"And all the while Rebecca sitting there at the head of the table, looking like an angel."
"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."
"That was the last weekend Bee and Giles ever spent at Manderley. I never asked them alone again."
"You’ll not put me to the asylum, will you?"
"Suppose it suits me better to live here, what then?" she said.
"We could make you look very foolish, Danny and I. We could make you look so foolish that no one would believe you, Max, nobody at all."
"I’d forgotten," said Maxim, "that when you shot a person there was so much blood."
"I knew it would happen one day, even when I went up to Edgecoombe and identified that body as hers."
"Rebecca is dead. That’s what we’ve got to remember. Rebecca is dead."
"I was the self that I had always been, I was not changed. But something new had come upon me that had not been before."
"We might want them on our side," I said.
"You think I’m the big, bad wolf, don’t you?"
"I call it a damn good effort, and I don’t care who hears me say so."
"I think you are behaving splendidly over all this, perfectly splendidly."
"I’m going to see justice is done to Rebecca."
"I’ve got something to tell you and I want to see you as soon as possible."
"Suicide… God Almighty, that doddering old fool of a Coroner got the jury to say suicide."
"She laughed at you like she did at the rest."