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So you see, when war comes to one’s village, one’s doorstep, it isn’t tragic and impersonal any longer. It is just an excuse to vomit private hatred. That is why I am not a great patriot.

Daphne du Maurier

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Daphne du Maurier
Age: 81 †
Born: 1907
Born: May 13
Died: 1989
Died: April 19
Author
Biographer
Novelist
Playwright
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
London
England
Dame Daphne du Maurier
War
Doorstep
Comes
Patriot
Great
Village
Tragic
Excuse
Hatred
Private
Vomit
Longer
Impersonal

More quotes by Daphne du Maurier

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here was a silence between them for a moment, and she wondered if all women, when in love, were torn between two impulses, a longing to throw modesty and reserve to the winds and confess everything, and an equal determination to conceal the love forever, to be cool, aloof, utterly detached, to die rather than admit a thing so personal, so intimate.
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And I don't like books which are full of name dropping.
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From the very first, I knew that it would be so...I smiled to myself, and said, That -- and none other.
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He was like someone sleeping who woke suddenly and found the world...all the beauty of it, and the sadness too. The hunger and the thirst. Everything he had never thought about or known was there before him, and magnified into one person who by chance, or fate--call it what you will--happened to be me.
Daphne du Maurier
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Once a person gave his talent to the world, the world put a stamp upon it. The talent was not a personal possession any more. It was something to be traded, bought and sold. It fetched a high price, or a low one. It was kicked in the common market.
Daphne du Maurier
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I wondered why it was that places are so much lovelier when one is alone.
Daphne du Maurier
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Men are simpler than you imagine my sweet child. But what goes on in the twisted, tortuous minds of women would baffle anyone.
Daphne du Maurier
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I wish I was a woman of about thirty-six dressed in black satin with a string of pearls.
Daphne du Maurier
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She had to live in this bright, red gabled house with the nurse until it was time for her to die... I thought how little we know about the feelings of old people. Children we understand, their fears and hopes and make-believe.
Daphne du Maurier
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When one is writing a novel in the first person, one must be that person.
Daphne du Maurier
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If you think I'm one of the people who try to be funny at breakfast you're wrong. I'm invariably illtempered in the early morning.
Daphne du Maurier
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People who mattered could not take the humdrum world. But this was not the world, it was enchantment and all of it was mine.
Daphne du Maurier
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Every moment was a precious thing, having in it the essence of finality.
Daphne du Maurier
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People who travel are always fugitives.
Daphne du Maurier
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When she smiled it was as though she embraced the world.
Daphne du Maurier
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A bad workman blames his tools.
Daphne du Maurier
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I would not be young again, if you offered me the world. But then I'm prejudiced.' 'You talk,' I said, 'as if you were ninety-nine.' 'For a woman I very nearly am,' she said. 'I'm thirty five.
Daphne du Maurier
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I could not ask forgiveness for something I had not done. As scapegoat, I could only bear the fault.
Daphne du Maurier
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Jem was safe from her, and he would ride away with a song on his lips and a laugh at her expense, forgetful of her, and of his brother, and of God while she dragged through the years, sullen and bitter, the stain of silence marking her, coming in the end to ridicule as a soured spinster who had been kissed once in her life and could not forget it.
Daphne du Maurier
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The point is, life has to be endured, and lived. But how to live it is the problem.
Daphne du Maurier