Rebecca Quotes

Chapter 1 Quotes

·       Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.

·       Tortured elms, monster shrubs.

·       Time could not wreck the perfect symmetry of those walls… a jewel in the hollow of a hand.

·       Manderley was ours no longer. Manderley was no more.

·       Nature…in her stealthy, insidious way had encroached upon the drive with long, tenacious fingers.

Chapter 2 Quotes

·       Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.

·       We have no secrets now from one another.

·       There was enough food there to keep a starving family for a week.

·       That freezing superior smile of hers.

·       I suppose it is his dependence on me that has made me bold at last.

Chapter 3 Quotes

·       It meant that I was a youthful thing and unimportant.

·       He would stare down at us.

·       Of course, you Englishmen are all the same about your homes.

·       People will say anything won’t they when a woman is attractive?

·       Bridge does not come easily for a mind brought up on Snap and Happy families.

Chapter 4 Quotes

·       Ninety pounds is a lot of money to me.

·       You have a home and I have none.

·       I was a person of importance. I was grown up at last.

·       She was a poor creature, and I thought of her with scorn.

Chapter 5 Quotes

·       I was like a little scrubby schoolboy with a passion for a sixth form prefect, and he kinder, and far more inaccessible.

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

·       Stop biting those nails, they are ugly enough already.

·       I would be a whipping boy again.

·       I suppose you are young enough to be my daughter, and I don’t know how to deal with you.

·       Max. She called him Max.

·       People like myself, quite and dull and youthful, who did not matter.

·       And I had to call him Maxim.

Chapter 6 quotes

·       All in your own class.

·       I can’t afford to leave her.

·       Which would you prefer? You can take your choice.

·       I’m asking you to marry me, you little fool.

·       I’m not the sort of person men marry.

·       I don’t belong to your sort of world for one thing.

·       I would be Mrs. De Winter.

·       Manderley will belong to me.

·       He had not said anything yet about being in love.

·       I think you are making a big mistake- one you will bitterly regret.

Chapter 7 quotes

·       Poor lamb…you probably ought to have bought a lot of clothes in London.

·       Timid, foolish creature

·       The drive twisted and turned as a serpent.

·       Slaughterous red, luscious and fantastic

·       Too beautiful, I thought, too powerful; they were not plants at all.

·       Gave her a skull’s face… set on a skeleton’s frame.

·       I guessed at once she considered me ill bred.

·       She doesn’t dare bully me though.

Chapter 8 quotes

·       Ignoring the second rate, the mediocre, laying her hand with sure certain instinct only upon the best.

·       I’m afraid you have made a mistake, I said, Mrs. De Winter has been dead for over a year.

·       Whatever you think Mrs. De Winter would have ordered.

·       That tall sloping R dwarfing its fellows.

·       My own handwriting, without individuality, without style, uneducated even.

Chapter 9 quotes

·       You’re an absolute child.

·       Maxim kept these things to himself that I questioned him never.

·       You were very young, very pretty

·       Of course she’s insanely jealous. I was afraid she would be.

·       She simply adored Rebecca.

·       He likes me in the way I like Jasper.

·       You are so very different from Rebecca.

Chapter 10 quotes

·       Come on you lazy little beggar… Shut up you idiot

·       But salmon, white, and gold, things of beauty and of grace

·       Don’t be angry with me anymore.

·       Good dog then, lie down, don’t worry me anymore.

Chapter 11 quotes

·       This was the hypersensitive behaviour of a neurotic.

·       You must use your influence with him.

·       That cloud of dark hair against the very white skin.

·       They came because they wanted to compare me to Rebecca.

·       I hated myself.

·       Not the sort of life I’ve been brought up to.

·       I suppose she was the most beautiful creature I ever saw in my life.

Chapter 12 quotes

·       I had never thought about my underclothes before…I had not thought the material or the existence of lace mattered.

·       Mrs. Danvers knew the colour of her eyes, her smile, the texture of her hair.

·       Don’t be a little idiot.

·       I can’t understand you.

·       I am like a between maid.

·       I suppose that’s why you married me, I said, you knew I was dull and quiet and inexperienced, so that there would never be any gossip about me.

·       There are too many years between us.

·       You are my father and my brother and my son. All those things.

Chapter 13 quotes

·       Maxim was my life and my world.

·       You’ve got angel’s eyes.

·       Tall and dark she was, he said, she gave you the feeling of a snake.

·       If I catch you looking at me through the windows here I’ll have you put to the asylum she said.

Chapter 14 quotes

·       I was a guest again. An uninvited guest.

·       How white and thin my face looked in the glass.

·       Triumphant, gloating, excited in a strange unhealthy way.

·       I haven’t washed it since she wore it for the last time.

·       Everyone was angry with her when she cut her hair… Short hair was much easier for riding and sailing.

·       They were torn from her body in the water… there was nothing on her body when it was found.

Chapter 15 quotes

·       He was always just a little ahead of me…I could not keep up with him.

·       I looked plain, unattractive

·       I do hope you will produce a son and heir before long.

·       He’s leaving Eton, you know, he’s going up to Oxford.

·       She had an amazing gift, Rebecca, I mean of being attractive to people, men, women, children, dogs.

Chapter 16 quotes

·       Playing the perfect host in his own inimitable way.

·       I’m not a bride, I said, I did not even have a proper wedding.

·       I wished he would not always treat me as a child, rather spoilt, rather irresponsible.

·       Would we never be together…standing shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand with no gulf between us?

·       I wanted to be his wife, his mother. I wanted to be old.

·       But what goes on in the twisted torturous minds of women would baffle anyone.

·       A husband is not so very different from a father after all.

·       There is a certain type of knowledge I prefer you not to have.

·       Like other men treat their wives…Knock you about you mean?

·       I did not recognise the face that stared at me in the glass.

·       The face of an exulting devil.

Chapter 17

·       She belonged to another breed of men and women, another race than I.

·       I had not the pride, I had not the guts. I was badly bred.

·       I wished I could be the man.

·       We were like two performers in a play, but we were divided, we were not acting with one another.

·       We had to put up this show, this miserable, sham performance.

Chapter 18

·       There was nothing quite so shaming, so degrading as a marriage that had failed.

·       I loved him in a sick, hurt, desperate way, like a child or a dog.

·       Maxim was not in love with me; he had never loved me.

·       He belonged to Rebecca. He would never love me because of Rebecca.

·       Rebecca was still Mrs De Winter

·       Rebecca, always Rebecca. I should never be rid of Rebecca.

·       I could fight the living, but I could not fight the dead.

·       Anger and jealousy were things that could be conquered.

·       She had all the courage and spirit of a boy, had my Mrs De Winter

·       Her long fingers twisting and tearing the black stuff of her dress.

·       Men turning to stare at her when she passed and she not twelve years old.

·       When she got off his back he was trembling all over, full of froth and blood

·       He was jealous while she lived, and now he’s jealous when she’s dead.

·       It’s you that’s the shadow and the ghost.

·       Mr. De Winter doesn’t love you. There’s not much for you to live for, is there?

Chapter 19

·       I wish I could lose my own identity and join them.

·       I’ve grown up Maxim, in twenty-four hours. I’ll never be a child again.

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

·       Will you look into my eyes and tell me that you love me now?

Chapter 20

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

·       He held my hands very tightly like a child who would gain confidence.

·       I hated her I tell you.

·       Our marriage was a farce from the very first.

·       She was viscious, damnable, rotten through and through.

·       Rebecca was incapable of love, of tenderness, of decency. She was not even normal.

·       She’s got the three things that matter in a wife…beauty, brains and breeding.

·       Tearing a flower to bits in her hands.

·       I clung to one thing only…Maxim did not love Rebecca.

·       The love that a man can bear for his plot of earth, his soil, his little kingdom.

·       If I had a child Max…neither you nor anyone in the world would ever prove that it was not yours.

·       I’ll be the perfect mother, Max, like I’ve been the perfect wife.

·       I fired at her heart.

Chapter 21

·       I too had killed Rebecca.

·       Rebecca’s power had dissolved into the air.

·       I am Mrs. De Winter now.

·       I’m glad I killed Rebecca. I shall never have any remorse for that.

Chapter 23

·       Hanging was quick. Hanging did not hurt. It broke your neck at once.

·       They were going to bury Rebecca. They were going to bring Rebecca back from the mortuary.

·       It’s the storm…it wont break

·       You’ll have children too.

·       It seemed to me that Rebecca had no reality anymore.

·       That’s the sort of death Rebecca would choose, she’d go out like she lived, fighting.

·       All married men with lovely wives are jealous, aren’t they? And some of em just can’t help playing Othello.

·       I can’t think why fellows can’t share their women instead of killing them.

·       A lovely woman isn’t like a motor tyre…the more you use her the better she goes.

·       In a book or in a play I would have found a revolver, and we would have shot Favell, hidden his body in a cupboard.

·       You won’t let him down because you’ve dined with him and he’s dined with you.

·       There was something degrading in the fact that Maxim had hit Favell.

·       Payment for services rendered, eh?...He’s done a good days work for you

·       She was not in love with you, or Mr. De Winter. She despised all men. She was above all that.

·       Love making was a game with her…she did it because it made her laugh.

·       She’s put a great cross beside it as though she wanted to break the pencil.

·       The black cross beside it.

·       She was afraid of nothing and no one.

·       There was only one thing ever worried her her, and that was the idea of getting old, of illness of dying in her bed.

·       I want to go quickly, like the snuffing of a candle.

Chapter 25

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

·       I held him and comforted him as though he were Jasper.

·       Rebecca would never have killed herself she wasn’t the type.

·       Just the sort of thing a Communist would do.

·       He’s your M.P I know him very well..He was at Oxford with Giles

·       We began to kiss one another, feverishly, desperately like guilty lovers who have not kissed before.

Chapter 26

·       No one would ever hurt Manderley

·       Our storm must have been local; there had been no rain here.

·       Rather too thin, I remember, rather pale; but then that’s the fashion nowdays, pity though it is.

Chapter 27

·       No doubt Max will ask you to be the godfather to his first child.

·       We know how to deal with it in our part of the world.

·       I want one too and so do you. You’re going to have some brandy.

·       He knew…of course he knew

·       He will never say anything. Never, never.

·       I was sure Frank liked me. I liked him too.

·       We would have children. Surely we would have children.

·       A face stared back at me that was not my own.

·       It twisted like a snake, and he took hold of it with both hands and smiled at Rebecca and put it round his neck.

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