"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."

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again."

"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, whatever the poets may say."

"I wish I was a woman of about thirty-six dressed in black satin with a string of pearls."

"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."

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

"Either you go to America with Mrs. Van Hopper or you come home to Manderley with me." "Do you mean you want a secretary or something?" "No, I'm asking you to marry me, you little fool."

"Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard."

"We're not meant for happiness, you and I."

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

"Because I want to; because I must; because now and forever more this is where I belong to be."

"There is no going back in life. There is no return. No second chance."

"...the routine of life goes on, whatever happens, we do the same things, go through the little performance of eating, sleeping, washing. No crisis can break through the crust of habit."

"It wouldn't make for sanity would it, living with the devil."

"Come and see us if you feel like it,' she said. 'I always expect people to ask themselves. Life is too short to send out invitations."

"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."

"Will you look into my eyes and tell me that you love me now?"

"The point is, life has to be endured, and lived. But how to live it is the problem."

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

"A dreamer, I walked enchanted, and nothing held me back."

"Every moment was a precious thing, having in it the essence of finality."

"Boredom is a pleasing antidote for fear"

"Time will mellow it, make it a moment for laughter. But now it was not funny, now I did not laugh. It was not the future, it was the present. It was too vivid and too real."

"Why this man should love that woman, what queer chemical mix-up in our blood draws us to one another, who can tell?"

"I had build up false pictures in my mind and sat before them. I had never had the courage to demand the truth."

"The moment of crisis had come, and I must face it. My old fears, my diffidence, my shyness, my hopeless sense of inferiority, must be conquered now and thrust aside. If I failed now I should fail forever."

"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."

"She knew that this was happiness, this was living as she had always wished to live."

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

"Dead men tell no tales, Mary."

"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."

"I would have gone too but I wanted to come straight back to you.I kept thinking of you, waiting here, all by yourself, not knowing what was going to happen."

"We all of us have our particular devil who ruses us and torments us, and we must give battle in the end."

"I don't mind. I like being alone."

"...but I should say that kindliness, and sincerity, and if I may say so--modesty--are worth far more to a man, to a husband, than all the wit and beauty in the world."

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

"And this then, that I am feeling now, is the hell that comes with love, the hell and the damnation and the agony beyond all enduring, because after the beauty and the loveliness comes the sorrow and the pain."

"There is no going back in life, no return, no second chance. I cannot call back the spoken word or the accomplished deed."

"... and through it all and afterwards they would be together, making their own world where nothing mattered but the things they could give to one another, the loveliness, the silence, and the peace."

"When she smiled it was as though she embraced the world."

"You understand now... how simple life becomes when things like mirrors are forgotten."

"Life was a series of greetings and farewells, one was always saying good-bye to something, to someone."

"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."

"How lacking in intuition men could be in persuading themselves that mending some stranger's socks, and attending to his comfort, could content a woman..."

"He stole horses' you'll say to yourself, 'and he didn't care for women; and but for my pride I'd have been with him now."

"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."

"I could not ask for forgiveness for something I had not done. As scapegoat, I could only bear the fault."

"I wonder ... when it was that the world first went amiss, and men forgot how to live and to love and to be happy."