We hope the example of Daphne's family will encourage you to post on this webpage your favourite lines other than the universally well-loved opening to Rebecca. Perhaps you'll be inspired to re-read her books and discover other lines with a special meaning for you.

Virago Press has published almost thirty of Daphne's books in paperback with a delightful hardback edition of Vanishing Cornwall. These have introductions by established authors, some of whom have presented at our Festival and submitted their own favourite lines below.

If you have already REGISTERED as a Member, please use the SUBMIT form to send your favourite lines to us, where they will be reviewed by Ann Willmore.

"Your Favourite Lines" is based on an original idea by Collin Langley.

Ella Westland
The Parasites

Maria shook her head.
'He doesn't really love me,' she said: 'he only loves the idea he once had of me. … The whole thing was an illusion.'
And even now, she thought, gazing into the fire, as I say these things to Niall and Celia, who understand, I'm still acting. I'm looking at myself, I'm seeing a person called Maria lying on a sofa and losing the love of her husband, and I'm sad for that poor, lonely soul, I want to weep for her; but me, the real me, is making faces in the corner.
The Parasites, Ch.3, p.23/4,Virago (2005).

Acting ran deep in the du Maurier psyche. Actors – like writers - are held to be highly empathetic and creative, yet they must also possess a steely propensity for dispassionate observation. What Maria knows is that such a gift comes at a cost, especially when she turns herself and those close to her into the objects of her attention. Maria's insight into the private life of an artist in this passage brings us close, I feel, to the author of the novel. Had I been given a opportunity to meet Daphne du Maurier, who died a few months before I moved to Cornwall, I would have expected to find her outwardly poised and polite, while remaining coolly aware of her own performance, inwardly 'making faces in the corner'. Ella Westland.
Ella Westland is the author of Reading Daphne, Truran (2007). CL.

Ella Westland
The Scapegoat

… I lived and breathed and had my being as a law-abiding, quiet, donnish individual of thirty-eight. But to the self who clamoured for release, the man within? How did my poor record seem to him?
Who he was and whence he sprang, what urges and what longings he might possess, I could not tell. I was so used to denying him expression that his ways were unknown to me; but he might have had a mocking laugh, a casual heart, a swift-roused temper, and a ribald tongue … Perhaps, if I had not kept him locked within me, he might have laughed, roistered, fought and lied.
The Scapegoat, Ch.1, p.6/7, Virago (2004)

For me, The Scapegoat epitomises that desire to live out the life of a more primitive and passionate inner self which runs obsessively through Daphne du Maurier's fiction – from Janet Coombe's yearning for freedom in her first novel, The Loving Spirit, to Dick Young's immersion in a parallel medieval world in her late book, The House on the Strand. Donnish John in The Scapegoat seizes his chance to try on Don Juan for size, though the quiet self-questioning side of his character prevails. Ella Westland.

Ella Westland is the author of Reading Daphne, Truran (2007). CL.

Ella Westland
The House on the Strand

The first thing I noticed was the clarity of the air, and then the sharp green colour of the land. There was no softness anywhere. The distant hills did not blend into the sky but stood out like rocks, so close that I could almost touch them, their proximity giving me that shock of surprise and wonder which a child feels looking for the first time through a telescope … every impression was heightened, every part of me singularly aware: eyesight, hearing, sense of smell, all had been in some way sharpened.
The House on the Strand, Ch.1, p1, Virago (2003).

So much of Daphne du Maurier's power as a novelist derives from her brilliance in sweeping her readers along for chapter after chapter that I have found it hard to capture the qualities that I most admire in her writing in a few quotable lines. One of the ways she casts her spell, however, is through mesmerising description, and she was particularly adept in using it in her opening pages to inveigle readers into the world of a novel. These arresting words from the beginning of The House on the Strand take us immediately inside her narrator's head to share the intensity of his drug-induced vision. Ella Westland.

Ella Westland is the author of Reading Daphne, Truran (2007). CL.

Writers should be read - but neither seen nor heard.

She was dead right too…Susan Hill.

Susan Hill's favourite line has been widely attributed to Daphne du Maurier on the internet, however, the origin is unclear. The most likely source would seem to be a letter Daphne wrote in August 1938 to her close friend Foy Quiller-Couch following the publication of Rebecca and consequent guesting at a Foyle's Literary Lunch. She did not have to speak but was clearly unimpressed with the speeches of at least one of her fellow guest authors, and wrote to Foy that authors never should be seen or heard. There is a reference to this in Daphne du Maurier by Margaret Forster, Ch.9, p.139, Arrow Books (2007). CL.

Susan Hill wrote Mrs de Winter, Sinclair-Stevenson (1993) a sequel to Rebecca. CL.

Piers Dudgeon
Enchanted Cornwall

Next morning I did a thing I had never done before, nor ever did again, except once in the desert, where to see sunrise is the peak of all experience. In short, I rose at 5.00 am. I pulled across the harbour in my pram, walked through the sleeping town and climbed out upon the cliffs just as the sun himself climbed out on Pont Hill behind me. The sea was glass. The air was soft and misty warm. And the only other creature out of bed was a fisherman, hauling crab pots at the harbour mouth. It gave me a fine feeling of conceit, to be up before the world. My feet in sand shoes seemed like wings. I came down to Pridmouth Bay, passing the solitary cottage by the lake, and, opening a small gate hard by, I saw a narrow path leading to the woods. Now, at last, I had the day before me, and no owls, no moon, no shadows could turn me back.
I followed the path to the summit of the hill and then, emerging from the woods, turned left, and found myself upon a high grass walk, with all the bay stretched out below me and the Gribben Head beyond.
I paused, stung by the beauty of that first pink glow of sunrise on the water, but the path led on, and I would not be deterred. Then I saw them for the first time - the scarlet rhododendrons. Massive and high they reared above my head, shielding the entrance to a long smooth lawn. I was hard upon it now, the place I sought. Some instinct made me crouch upon my belly and crawl softly to the wet grass at the foot of the shrubs. The morning mist was lifting, the sun was coming up above the trees even as the moon had done last autumn. This time there was no owl, but blackbird, thrush and robin greeting the summer day.
I edged my way on to the lawn, and there she stood. My house of secrets. My elusive Menabilly...
Daphne du Maurier: Enchanted Cornwall - Her Pictorial Memoir, Ch.4, The Calamity of Yesterday, p121/4, Penguin Group (1989).

One of my favourite Daphne du Maurier pieces captures the thrill of her first feelings for the beauty of Cornwall, driven by an infinite capacity also to savour its mystery. Piers Dudgeon.

This quote, with minor variations to the wording, can also be found in Myself When Young: The Shaping of a Writer, Ch.6, p.151/152, Virago (2004). AW.

Piers Dudgeon is the editor and co-publisher of Daphne du Maurier: Enchanted Cornwall – Her Pictorial Memoir, Penguin Group (1989) and author of Captivated: J.M. Barrie, the du Mauriers, and the dark side of Neverland, Chatto & Windus (2008). CL.

Amanda Craig
Rebecca

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.
Rebecca, Ch.1, p.1, Virago (2003).

Is it a dream or a nightmare? The nameless heroine's yearning for her husband's lost ruined house seems almost greater than her love for him. It's the first novel I read that captured the passion one may feel not for a person, but for a place. Amanda Craig.

Amanda Craig wrote the introduction to the Virago edition of The Flight of the Falcon. AW.

Amanda Craig
My Cousin Rachel

'In England,' I said, 'especially down here, we lay great stress upon the weather. We have to, by the sea. Our land isn't very rich, you see, for farming; not as it is up-country. The soil is poor, and with four days out of seven wet we're very dependent on the sun when it does shine…'
My Cousin Rachel, Ch.8, p.82, Virago (2003).

Everything you need to know about Phillip Ashley's Englishness, his emotionally stunted nature, is in this paragraph as he talks uncomprehendingly to his Italian cousin Rachel, for whom generosity like the sun is natural. Amanda Craig.

Amanda Craig wrote the introduction to the Virago edition of The Flight of the Falcon. AW.

Caroline Metcalfe
Mary Anne

'Come far?' asked her next-door neighbour, sucking an orange.
'Only from round the corner,' she said, 'from Bowling Inn Alley,'
The bells of St Martin's began to toll but she went on sitting there, eating her bread-and-cheese, tossing the rind to the pigeons that spattered the steps, and watching a million starlings span the sky.
Mary Anne, Part 4, Ch.6, p.385, Virago (2004).

I love the end of Mary Anne when she has been the mistress of a prince and is reduced again to poverty and someone asks her if she has come far. Caroline Metcalfe.