Daphne du Maurier

Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning, DBE (May 13, 1907 – April 19, 1989) was an English author and playwright.

Daphne du Maurier in 1947

Quotes

• Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.
  • Rebecca (1938), ch. 1, opening words

• I was always pretending to be someone else… historical characters, all those I invented for myself…I act even to this day…It's the old imagination working, a kind of make believe.
  • On her childhood (from a 1977 interview as quoted in “The menacing Daphne du Maurier” in Independent.ie (2017 Oct 2)

• The name Rebecca…stood out black and strong, the tall and sloping R dwarfing the other letters.
  • On her choice of the title character’s name in Rebecca in “Daphne du Maurier always said her novel Rebecca was a study in jealousy” in The Telegraph (2013 Aug 17)

• The Menace…in movie language, and especially among women, means a heart-throb, a lover, someone with wide shoulders and no hips.”
  • On her explanation of the phrase used as a theme and short story title (as quoted in “Why Daphne du Maurier was Britain’s mistress of suspense” in The Guardian; 2017 Jun 13)

• My novels are what is known as popular and sell very well, but I am not a critic’s favourite, indeed I am generally dismissed with a sneer as a bestseller and not reviewed at all.
  • On how her novels are typically received by critics (as quoted in “Why Daphne du Maurier was Britain’s mistress of suspense” in The Guardian; 2017 Jun 13)

Quotes about Daphne du Maurier

• I write about the black experience, because it's what I know. But I'm always talking about the human condition, what human beings feel and how we feel. Given these circumstances, a human being will react this way: he'll be happy, will weep, will celebrate, will fall. So my books are popular in Asia, in Africa, in Europe. Why would I, a black girl in the South, fall in love with Tolstoy or Dickens? I was Danton and Madame Defarge and all those people in A Tale of Two Cities. I was Daphne du Maurier and the Bronte sisters in a town where blacks were not allowed to cross the street. I was educated by those writers. Not about themselves and their people, but about me, what I could hope for.
  • 1983 interview in Conversations with Maya Angelou (1989)