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.

A du Maurier fan
Julius

'I adore Wagner,' she was saying. 'It's useless to talk to me about Italian opera. I don't know, Mr Lévy, if you know the duet in Tristan - those opening bars, that swell of mystery and enchantment…' He let her go on with it, murmuring 'Yes' and 'No' as seemed to be expected; but he was considering with some hostility that the virgin daughter of a man like Walter Dreyfus could only be approached through marriage. He pushed the annoyance of this aside for a while…
Julius, Part 3, Manhood (1890-1910), p.159/160, Virago (2004).

'Yes, Mr Lévy, I'm sure your reaction to Parsifal must be extremely interesting, you must have been astonished at such serious romanticism.'
'You are rather lovely in your way,' thought Julius, 'but it would do you a world of good to be put to bed.' And aloud he said coldly, speaking more to Hartmann than to her: 'I only understand two kinds of music. One, the songs without words or melody that my father used to play on the flute - he was a wretched fellow who couldn't sell a kilo of cheese without muddling the change, but he played like a god - and the other is the music thumped on drums in the native quarter of Algiers and danced to by little naked prostitutes of twelve years old.'
There was an uncomfortable silence…
Julius, Part 3, Manhood (1890-1910), p162, Virago (2004).

Here we have the manifestation of evil; a manipulative Julius hardened by an impoverished upbringing of brutal self-sufficiency. Now a very successful London businessman he needed a wife with the right society background.
In this dialogue between Julius Lévy and Rachel Dreyfus at their formal introduction, Daphne portrays a playful Rachel discussing opera with Julius whom she well knew had little experience of the genre. Julius' disarmingly honest reaction should have sent a clear message to Rachel. 'There was an uncomfortable silence…' What a deliciously, vivid, flesh-tingling image that those few words create. Eventually, of course, they married with disastrous consequences for Rachel and their equally manipulative daughter Gabriel.
Yet another example which challenges the myth of Daphne being just a romantic novelist.
A du Maurier fan.

Julius was originally published with the title The Progress of Julius. AW.

Sam Rimington
My Cousin Rachel

The words were scrawled, almost illegible.
'For God's sake, come to me quickly. She has done for me at last, Rachel my torment. If you delay, it may be too late. Ambrose'
My Cousin Rachel, Ch.3, p.27, Virago (2003).

Yet I was in error even then, she called me Ambrose....
They used to hang men at Four Turnings in the old days. Not any more though.
My Cousin Rachel, Ch.26, p.335, Virago (2003).

I read somewhere that even Daphne herself didn't know the truth of the matter; was Rachel angel or devil. When as a teenager I saw the Richard Burton, Olivia de Havilland film, I remember spending an age trying to decide, but eventually gave it up! Sam Rimington.

Freddie Browning
Rule Britannia

'…Anyway it's another day, and life is for living, isn't it? How's Madam?'
'It's her birthday,' said Emma, 'and she's asleep in the basement, or was. We none of us went to bed last night.' She turned to Bevil Summers. 'It's really been rather a strain, but you know how she is, she never let's go. Now Joe and Terry are back all will be well. There, she is awake. What a happy birthday greeting for her.'
Mad was standing at the top of the steps by the porch. She was holding out her arms to both the boys. They were laughing and talking together, they didn't see her. They went straight past her and into the hall. Had they done it on purpose, was it a joke? Mad was still standing there with her arms open, smiling at Emma. Then she wasn't there any more.
'What's the matter?' asked Bevil Summers.
Emma did not answer for a moment. What was it her grandmother had said last night to Andy, on sentry duty at the cellar door? 'We're all together. What a good time to go.' Now it was true - they were all together, for Joe and Terry had come home.
When she spoke her voice was calm. 'I think you had better go down to the basement. Mad has been asleep for a very long time.'
He glanced at her quickly, then ran up the steps into the house, brushing past a small figure at the entrance. Sam came down from the porch, carrying something in his arms. He stood on the path a moment, then lifted his hands.
'I thought I'd let the pigeon go. I had a feeling she wanted to be free.'
The bird didn't fly far, though. She circled a moment, then settled on the branch of an ilex tree overlooking the ploughed field. It wasn't misty any more. The helicopters were still flying eastward into the sun.
Rule Britannia, Ch.22, p.321/2, Virago (2004).

From a personal point of view, I've always found the end of Rule Britannia poignant. Here is Daphne signing off from all those neurotic, tortured, fictional narrators / alto egos, with the bathos of Mad in her dotage. No paranoid air of menace, no gothic gasp of suspense, or ragnorakian burning of Manderley here, just a ghosting away of her loving spirit, surrounded by a virtual phantasm of friends and family, going gently into that good night. This is the way the word {sic} ends, not with a bang but a whimper.
This is the last farewell of Daphne's love affair with fiction, nothing left her now but the memoirs. Freddie Browning.

Freddie Browning is Daphne du Maurier's grandson. CL.

Thomas Clyde
Don't Look Now and Other Stories

I am a schoolmaster by profession. Or was. I handed in my resignation to the Head before the end of the summer term in order to forestall inevitable dismissal. The reason I gave was true enough - ill-health, caused by a wretched bug picked up on holiday in Crete, which might necessitate a stay in hospital of several weeks, various injections, etc. I did not specify the nature of the bug. He knew, though, and so did the rest of the staff. And the boys. My complaint is universal, and has been so through the ages, an excuse for jest and hilarious laughter from earliest times, until one of us oversteps the mark and becomes a menace to society. Then we are given the boot. The passer-by averts his gaze, and we are left to crawl out of the ditch alone, or stay there and die.
Don't Look Now and Other Stories, Not After Midnight, p.56, Penguin (2006).

He was making an effort to pull himself together, and still rocking on his feet he fumbled for a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. He lit one for himself, then offered me the packet. I shook my head, telling him I did not smoke. Then, greatly daring, I observed, 'I don't drink either.'
'Good for you,' he answered astonishingly, 'neither do I. The beer they sell you here is all piss anyway, and the wine is poison.' He looked over his shoulder to the group at the café and with a conspiratorial wink dragged me to the wall beside the pool.
'I told you all those bastards are Turks, and so they are,' he said, 'wine-drinking, coffee-drinking Turks. They haven't brewed the right stuff here for over five thousand years. They knew how to do it then.'
I remembered what the bar-tender had told me about the pig-swill in his chalet. 'Is that so?' I enquired.
He winked again, and then his slit eyes widened, and I noticed that they were naturally bulbous and protuberant, a discoloured muddy brown with the whites red-flecked. 'Know something?' he whispered hoarsely. 'The scholars have got it all wrong. It was beer the Cretans drank here in the mountains, brewed from spruce and ivy, long before wine. Wine was discovered centuries later by the God-damn Greeks.'
He steadied himself, one hand on the wall, the other on my arm. Then he leant forward and was sick into the pool. I was very nearly sick myself.
Don't Look Now and Other Stories, Not After Midnight, p.75/76, Penguin (2006).

As a teacher myself and a frequent visitor to Crete, I have a certain sympathy with Timothy Grey, the narrator of Not After Midnight. Several years ago a similar encounter occurred between myself and an inebriated American who had very fixed views on the Greek Classics! I much admire Dame Daphne's short stories and in particular those set in foreign climes. I had the good fortune to stay at The Minos Beach Hotel where this bewitching tale is set and it is most rewarding to gaze upon the chalets overlooking the Gulf of Mirabello and imagine the demonic Mr.Stoll drinking his evil blend of beer brewed from spruce and ivy whilst the smiling god Dionysus awaits his next victim. Thomas Clyde.

Sam Rimington
The House on the Strand

He did not say anything. He just sat there staring at me.
The telephone went on ringing, and I crossed the room to answer it, but a silly thing happened as I picked up the receiver. I couldn't hold it properly; my fingers and the palm of my hand went numb, and it slipped out of my grasp and crashed to the floor. The House on the Strand, Ch.24, p.329. Virago (2003).

Drugs were all the rage in some circles when Daphne wrote this book; she even contemplated trying them herself, in the interests of research, but decided, wisely, against going through with it. It always fills me with horror thinking how Dick becomes enmeshed in the power of the time travelling drug and is ultimately lost. Sam Rimington.

Lucy Berens
I'll Never Be Young Again

Hesta was still lying on the bed. She was staring up at the balloon that hung from the ceiling in the corner of the room. It did not seem to move at all. I chucked her a cigarette, but she did not take it. I wished she would not look so young. She had never looked so young as this. I went on gazing out of the window and smoking my cigarette. I kept my eyes fixed on the tiles of the roof, and it seemed to me that, suddenly, out of nowhere, born from a thought, I saw Jake's face looking at me, and we were in a circus tent, with the hot air about us, and the crowd swarming against the ropes. Jake - looking down at me.
It was something of horror, something of fear, and then it was gone.
Hesta was sitting up now, pulling at her dress. Why did she have to look so young? I did not know what to do, I did not know what to say. She glanced up at me, and smiled, and she seemed a child, with a child's smile. I wondered whether she expected me to sit beside her, and take her in my arms, and kiss her. If only she would not look like that. If only she were different. The orange béret lay at her feet.
The rain kept on all the time. Hesta looked up at me, waiting for me to be the first to speak, waiting for me to do something, to say something, as though in some strange way she asked for comfort. I did not know what to do.
I threw away my cigarette. 'Oh! hell!' I said, 'let's go out and get bloody drunk…'
I'll Never Be Young Again, Part 2: Hesta, Ch.4, p.211, Virago (2005).

I'll Never Be Young Again was the first D du M novel that I ever read. I was nineteen and it made me long to visit Paris. I loved her descriptions of the city, the street life and the student bars. It was a magical time for me; I wanted to be Hesta and wear an orange béret and meet the man of my dreams! Sad to say, they had bérets in all the colours of the rainbow but nothing in orange, and my man did not show up until five years later in a windswept Aberdeen! Now, perhaps I too can hear a bird singing from a long way off. He seems to be saying.
'I'll never be young again- I'll never be young again.' Lucy Berens.

Daphne du Maurier fan
The Parasites

'The thing is,' she said, 'people always think I'm ethereal. Wide-eyed and wan. I wonder why.'
'Perhaps you don't lie about with them like this,' said Niall.
'I do lie about,' she said, 'from time to time. The trouble is I go off everyone so quickly. I soon get bored.'
'Bored with the things they say? Or with the things they do?'
'With the things they do. I never listen to the things they say.'
Niall lit a cigarette. No easy matter, in his cramped position.
'It's like music,' he said. 'After all, there are only eight notes to an octave.'
'What about all those sharps and flats?'
'Well, you can play about with them,' he said.
'Think of Elgar,' she said, 'Enigma Variations. And Rachmaninoff, having fun with Paganini.'
'You set too high a standard,' said Niall. 'You must depress your friends.'
The Parasites, Ch.14, p.176, Virago (2005).

In The Du Mauriers Daphne wrote 'The du Mauriers have streaks in common…They laugh immoderately…their sense of humour is apt to be warped and tinged with satire.' Ch.17, p.310/1, Virago (2004).
I love these lines from The Parasites since they illustrate Daphne's sense of humour. The book was purportedly the nearest she came to self-analysis, with its three leading characters reflections of herself.
She wrote to Oriel Malet 9 March, 1956 that '…Niall was much more a facet of myself.' Letters from Menabilly: Portrait of a Friendship, p.63, Orion Books (1994).
Rachmaninoff's 'Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (18th var.) was one of Daphne's favourite pieces of music that she played at night in Menabilly during the War. A Daphne du Maurier fan.

Lisa Appignanesi
The Scapegoat

'It's only when women have nothing to do that they get into mischief. They turn religious or take lovers.'
The Scapegoat, Ch.25, p.343, Virago (2004).

Lisa Appignanesi.

Lisa Appignanesi wrote the introduction to the Virago edition of The Scapegoat. She is President of English PEN, an organisation founded to promote literature as a means of greater understanding between cultures. CL.