Rebecca quotes

The narrator has just dreamt about Manderly and has just woken up

"For Manderly was ours no longer, Manderly was no more"

The narrator has just unveiled her costume for the ball

"They all stared at me like dumb things. Beatrice uttered a little cry and put her hand to her mouth"

This occurs after Maxim has revealed his secret surrounding Rebecca's

death, which he had kept for the last year.

"Rebecca's power had dissolved into the air, like the mist had done. She would never haunt me again."

Maxim and the narrator are preparing to go on a walk after Beatrice and

Giles have left

"Women are always half an hour when they go to their bedrooms"

Maxim and the narrator are eating dinner together after the Crowans' visit

"A husband is not so very different from a father..."

The narrator tells Maxim that she is going to London with him tomorrow and after tells him that they need to be together as Maxim risks getting a sentence

"I held out my arms to him and he came to me like a child"

Maxim is confessing his murder of Rebecca to the narrator after her body was found

"I killed her. I shot Rebecca in the cottage in the cove."

The narrator and Maxim are driving around Monaco while Mrs Van hopper was ill

"You're too young for one thing, and too soft."

The narrator goes to the Happy Valley for the first time

"Not blood-coloured like the giants in the drive, but salmon, white and gold, things of beauty and grace"

Mrs Danvers is convincing the narrator to commit suicide and she is about to

"The mist entered my nostrils and lay upon my lips rank and sour. It was stifling, like a blanket, like an anaesthetic"

Narrator describes a dream she had about returning to Manderley the night before

"Nature had come into her own again and, little by little, in her stealthy, insidious way had encroached upon the drive with long, tenacious fingers"

The narrator learns about Rebecca's infertility

"The x-rays showed a certain malformation of the uterus, I remember, which meant she could never have had a child;"

The narrator has just returned to her room after the ball. She is reflecting on the events that took place, and that Maxim had not returned home that night.

"What I had thought was love for me... was not love"

"I was young, and he was lonely"

The couple are finally being affectionate because Maxim has confided his secret in the narrator

"Then he began to kiss me. He had not kissed me like this before."

The narrator is describing her and Maxim's life in Europe after Manderly was destroyed

"we have no secrets now from one another"

Beatrice is describing Mrs Danver's reaction to the narrator marrying Maxim

"Of course she's insanely jealous. I was afraid she would be"

The narrator has read Maxim's poetry book which was given to him by Rebecca and found that she called him Max

"Max. she called him Max"

Mrs Danvers is trying to convince the narrator to kill herself

"Mr de Winter doesn't love you. There's not much for you to live for, is there?'"

the narrator is looking longingly at some holidaymakers in Kerrith

"I wished I could lose my own identity and join them."

During the Colonel's investigation, Jack Favell says this to him.

"You're going to back De Winter. You won't let him down because you've dined with him, and he's died with you"

It is the morning after the Manderley Ball, Maxim never came back the night before and the narrator is questioning her marriage

"Rebecca, always Rebecca. Wherever I've walked in Manderley, wherever I sat, even in my thoughts and dreams, I met Rebecca."

It is the morning and the narrator is eating her breakfast after a disturbed night's sleep

"I had varied wandering dreams. We were walking through the woods, Maxim and I, and he was always just a little ahead of me. I could not keep up with him"

This sentence is the opening line of the book

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again."

Maxim has left to identify the corpse found in the boat from the water. Mrs Danvers has come to meet with the narrator after receiving a message through Robert, complaining that Rebecca never used to send messages through servants. The narrator coolly replies that she doesn't care what Rebecca used to do - this information is of no concern to anyone anymore.

"'I'm afraid it does not concern me very much what Mrs De Winter used to do,' I said. 'I am Mrs de Winter now, you know. And if I choose to send a message by Robert I shall do so.'"

Maxim tells the narrator about how Rebecca actually died. How Maxim went down to the cottage with a gun and confronted Rebecca, only for her to taunt him with her control and power over him. Furious, Maxim shot Rebecca and she fell to the floor, still smiling.

"She knew she would win in the end. I saw her smile, when she died."

After Maxim reveals he killed Rebecca, he tells the narrator the truth about Rebecca and her diabolical intentions.

"The beauty of Manderley that you see today,... It's all due to her, to Rebecca"

the narrator expresses her thoughts on a morning drive with Maxim in Monte Carlo

"I wish I was a woman of about thirty-six dressed in black satin with a string of pearls."

The narrator describes her experience at breakfast with Maxim at Manderley.

"There was enough food there to keep a starving family for a week. I never knew what happened to it all, and the waste used to worry me"

The narrator has just realised that Frank the truth about Rebecca's death but is pretending not to know to stay loyal to Maxim.

"I glanced up, and I saw Frank looking at Maxim. He looked away again immediately but not before I had seen and understood the expression in his eyes."

Here the narrator is once again interrupted by Mrs Van Hopper whilst she is thinking about Maxim

"Mrs Van Hooper's voice pierced my dream like an electric bell"

Mrs Danvers has discovered the narrator going to Rebecca's old bedroom behind her back and looking at some of the things in there. Mrs Danvers was clearly tracking the narrator's moves as she followed her in there

"I shall never forget the expression on her face. Triumphant, gloating, excited in a strange unhealthy way"

The narrator recalls her time at Manderley and reveals her fear of Mrs Danvers when thinking about the food waste

"she would have looked at me in scorn, smiling that freezing superior smile of hers"

The narrator is coming to Manderly for the first time and is met by a wall of red rhododendrons

"Slaughterous red, luscious and fantastic"

Maxim has gone to tell to Mrs Van Hooper about his marriage to the narrator and inform her the narrator will no longer be travelling with her. The narrator is waiting outside the room and sees the poetry book Rebecca gaveMaxim. She goes to put it away but accidentally drops it onto the floor and it opens on the page with Rebecxas name. The narrator cuts the page into little pieces and puts them in the bin

"Even now the ink stood up on the fragments thick and black, the writing was not destroyed"

This is from the beginning of the book when the narrator is dreaming about

Manderly and imagines all the plants have grown into monstrous untamed shrubs after Manderly was abandoned because of the fire

"The rhododendrons stood fifty feet high, twisted and entwined with bracken, and they had entered into alien marriage with a host of nameless shrubs, poor, bastard things that clung about their roots as though conscious of their spurious origin."

The narrator and Maxim are driving back to Manderly after winning the court case when they see red streaks in the sky. They realise that what they are seeing is Manderly burning down. This moment has already been foreshadowed by Maxim insisting that he and the narrator immediately drive back to Manderly, as he has a supernatural feeling that something is wrong

"It was shot with crimson, like a splash of blood. And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea."

The narrator comes down the stairs at the Manderley ball in an identical dress to Rebecca years before. Maxim is horrified at the sight of her.

"What the hell do you think you are doing?" he asked. His eyes blazed in anger. His face was still ashen white.

The narrator and Mrs Van Hooper have coffee with Maxim. This is the first time the narrator meets Maxim, and she describes her first impressions of him.

"His face was arresting, sensitive, medieval in some strange inexplicable way, and I was reminded of a portrait seen in a gallery, I had forgotten where, of a certain Gentleman Unknown"

The narrator has recently arrived at Manderley and is writing a letter to Mrs Van Hooper to inform her that she is content but reflects on her handwriting after reading Rebecca's notebook.

"My own handwriting, without individuality, without style, uneducated even, the writing of an indifferent pupil in a second rate school."

For the first time since arriving at Manderley, the narrator explains how she feels to Maxim

"Just like a between-maid, as i said, and not the mistress of a house."

Maxim has just told the narrator about the cruel realities of his marriage with Rebecca such as her acts of adultery and verbal abuse towards Maxim

"My heart was light like a feather, floating in the air. He had never loved Rebecca."

The narrator has been exploring the house and walked into Rebecca's old room

"I was a guest again. An uninvited guest. I had strolled into my hostess' bedroom by mistake."

Maxim and the narrator are eating dinner together and the narrator begins to imagine what Rebecca would be doing in her place

"I had so identified myself with Rebecca that my own dull self did not exist."

The narrator has entered the drawing room and is admiring its beauty. The morning room is a room which formerly belonged to Rebecca and was desgined by Rebecca

"Perfection in a strange and startling way, not coldly formal like the drawing room shown to the public, but vividly alive”