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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, this moment will not pass.

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
Washing
Shows
Mirror
Another
Mirrors
Hands
Pass
Past
Present
Time
Future
Moment
Suspended
Cracked
Moments

More quotes by Daphne du Maurier

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She knew that this was happiness, this was living as she had always wished to live.
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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The urge to climb will never be explained. In olden days, perhaps it was a wish to reach the stars. Today, anyone so minded can buy a seat on a plane and feel himself master of the skies. Even so, he will not have rock under his feet, or air upon his face nor will he know the silence that comes only on the hills.
Daphne du Maurier
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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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When the leaves rustle, they sound very much like the stealthy movement of a woman in evening dress, and when they shiver suddenly, and fall, and scatter away along the ground, they might be the patter of a woman’s hurrying footsteps, and the mark in the gravel the imprint of a high-heeled shoe.
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 believe there is a theory that men and women emerge finer and stronger after suffering, an that to advance in this or any world we must endure ordeal by fire. (From Rebecca)
Daphne du Maurier
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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.
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.
Daphne du Maurier
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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 be like living the moment all over again.
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 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.
Daphne du Maurier
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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 and folly built up a great distorted wall in front of them that hid the truth.
Daphne du Maurier
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Why did dogs make one want to cry? There was something so quiet and hopeless about their sympathy. Jasper, knowing something was wrong, as dogs always do. Trunks being packed. Cars being brought to the door. Dogs standing with drooping tails, dejected eyes. Wandering back to their baskets in the hall when the sound of the car dies away.
Daphne du Maurier
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[Referring to the birds:] Nat listened to the tearing sound of splintering wood, and wondered how many million years of memory were stored in those little brains, behind the stabbing beaks, the piercing eyes, now giving them this instinct to destroy mankind with all the deft precision of machines.
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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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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He lacked tenderness he was rude and he had more than a streak of cruelty in him he was a thief and a liar. He stood for everything she feared and hated and despised but she knew she could love him... This was no choice made with the mind.
Daphne du Maurier
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I had build up false pictures in my mind and sat before them. I had never had the courage to demand the truth.
Daphne du Maurier
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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.
Daphne du Maurier