The Parasites Quotes

“Watch that boy. He's going to startle somebody someday.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The Parasites

“Once a person gave his talent to the world, the world put a stamp upon it. The talent was not a personal possession any more. It was something to be traded, bought and sold. It fetched a high price, or a low one. It was kicked in the common market.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The Parasites

“It was a day to be inside somewhere, cosseted and loved; by a warm fireside with the clatter of friendly cups and saucers, a sleepy cat licking his paws, a cyclamen in a pot on a windowsill putting forth new buds.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The Parasites

“But the point is this Monsieur...the reason why Madame complains of you is not because of the immorality in itself; but because, so she tells me, you make immorality delicious.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The Parasites

“They say that when we sleep our sub-conscious selves are revealed, our hidden thoughts and desires are written plain upon our features and our bodies like the tracings of rivers on a map; and no one reads them but the darkness.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The Parasites

“An armchair is always an armchair, to the modern child, never a ship, never a desert island. The pattern on the wall are patterns; not characters whose faces change at dusk... The trouble is, the children have no imagination. They are sweet, and have carefree, honest eyes; but they have not any magic in their day. The magic has all gone...”
― Daphne du Maurier, The Parasites

“The door from the kitchen opened, and the smell of Freada’s Chesterfield cigarettes”
― Daphne du Maurier, The Parasites

“People always gossiped about us, even as children. We created a strange sort of hostility wherever we went. In those days, during and after the First World War, when other children were well-mannered and conventional, we were ill-disciplined and wild. Those dreadful Delaneys”
― Daphne du Maurier, The Parasites

“Thank God nobody knew who he was, and he did not have to talk, but the sense of oppression was with him just the same. He was aware of a feeling of acute dislike, almost of hatred, towards all these unknown men and women who were filing past him to the stalls. They were like the spectators at an arena in ancient Rome. They had all dined well, and now they had come to watch Maria being torn to pieces by lions. Their eyes were avaricious, their hands were claws. All they wanted to do was to draw blood…”
― Daphne du Maurier, The Parasites

“Freada said nothing was worth doing without effort. Pappy used to say that too. Everyone said it. But when things happened easily, what was the sense in driving yourself, in sweating blood?”
― Daphne du Maurier, The Parasites

“What was the point of having a man if all he could do was turn his back and sleep? Not that she wanted him to do anything else, but in a way it was an insult. The turned back reminded her of all the various backs that had not been turned. Which was a depressing thought, because it meant she was beginning to live in the past.

Backs That Were Never Turned. The Reminisces of Maria Delaney...No, it was not depressing. It was funny.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The Parasites

“Niall never really knew which; but he used to lie in bed until she returned in the middle of the day, and he read every one of the works of Maupassant, the book in one hand and a bar of chocolate in the other.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The Parasites

“Think of the unkind things we have forgotten,” said Niall. “Those are the ones that will be totted up against us. I sometimes wake up in the early morning and go quite cold thinking of all the things I must have done and can’t remember.” “Pappy must have taught you that,” said Celia. “Pappy had a fearful theory that when we die we go to a theater, and we sit down and see the whole of our lives re-acted before us. And nothing is omitted. Not one single, sordid detail. We have to watch it all.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The Parasites

“How am I to know?” said Maria. “People never tell one the truth, not the real truth. It may be all right tonight, and the notices may be good, and everybody be nice—but I shan’t really know.” “You’ll know all right,” he said, “here.” And he tapped his chest. “Inside,” he said. “I feel it’s all wrong to be nervous,” said Maria. “I feel it’s lack of confidence. One ought to go right ahead, never minding.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The Parasites

“It was a mistake to separate us. We should have stayed together. Once a family breaks up and splits, it never comes together again. Not in the old way. If there had been a settled home to which we could have gone, it would have been different. Children need a settled home, a place that smells familiar. A life that goes on, with the same toys, the same walks, the same faces day after day. Where, wet or fine, existence can be a pattern, a routine. We had no pattern. Not after Mama died.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The Parasites

“She had the cold, angry face that spelled trouble, the face that sent servants flying, stage managers running for their lives, and ourselves to whatever distant room we might possess.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The Parasites

“It wasn’t like that for us,” said Niall, “all bright, and clean, and purged and commonplace. Plastic toys. Things that go in and out.” “Perhaps it was,” said Maria; “perhaps we don’t remember.” “I do remember,” said Niall. “I remember everything. That’s the trouble. I remember much too much”
― Daphne du Maurier, The Parasites

“That dusty, musty theater smell, how it still haunts each one of us in turn, and Maria at least will never shake it free. That swing door with the bar across it, the cold passage, those hollow-sounding stairs and the descent to the abyss. Those notices upon the walls that no one ever reads, that prowling cat with tail erect which mews and vanishes, the rusty fire-bucket into which someone throws the stub of a cigarette. The first sight of it would always be the same, no matter in what city or what country. The posters, sometimes black-printed, sometimes red, with Pappy’s and Mama’s names upon them, and the photographs, always of Mama, never of Pappy—this was a superstition of them both—hanging by the entrance.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The Parasites

“You have never lived anywhere else,” he said, “and you are not an individual at all, you’re just a hotch-potch of every character you’ve ever acted. Your mood and your personality change with each new part that comes along. There is no such woman as Maria, there never has been. Even your children know it. And that’s why they are fascinated by you, for two days only, and then go running up to the nursery to Polly, because Polly is real, and genuine, and alive.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The Parasites

“It was Charles who called us the parasites. The way he said it was surprising, and sudden; he was one of those quiet reserved sort of men, not given to talking much or stating his opinion, unless upon the most ordinary facts of day by day, so that his outburst—coming, as it did, towards the end of the long, wet Sunday afternoon, when we had none of us done anything but read the papers and yawn and stretch before the fire—had the force of an explosion.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The Parasites

“I feel it's all wrong to be nervous," said Maria. "I feel it's lack of confidence. One ought to go right ahead, never minding."
"Some people do," he said, "but they're the duds. They are the ones that win prizes at school, and you never hear of them again. Go on. Be nervous. Be ill. Be sick down the lavatory pan. It's part of your life from now on. You've got to go through with it. Nothing's worth while if you don't fight for it first, if you haven't a pain in your belly beforehand.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The Parasites

“She sipped her glass of water, crooking her finger, smiling at Maria. I can’t make up my mind, thought Niall, whether Polly is a criminal, cunning and dangerous, ripe for the Old Bailey; or just so bloody stupid that it would be kindness to wring her neck and spare the world more pain.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The Parasites

“The trouble is, the children have no imagination. They are sweet, and have carefree, honest eyes; but they have not any magic in their day. The magic has all gone…”
― Daphne du Maurier, The Parasites

“It was strange how a person came full circle. How a man was once a baby and a boy, and then a lover and a father, and now a child again. It was strange that once she had been a little girl, climbing onto Pappy’s knee, burying her head in his shoulder, clinging to him for protection, and he had been young, and strong, and like a god. And now it was all over, the purpose of his life. The strength had ebbed away. The man who had lived, and loved, and given the beauty of his voice to millions, was weary, and crabbed, and fretful, following with his eyes the daughter he had once protected and carried in his arms. Yes, Pappy had come full circle. He was back again, on the road where he had begun. But why? To what end? Would anybody ever know?”
― Daphne du Maurier, The Parasites

“Don’t be silly. Now, watch…” Very slowly Maria pushed the comforter into Caroline’s mouth. It acted as a sort of gag. Caroline sucked noisily, and closed her eyes. The effect was magic. The crying ceased. “You’d scarcely credit it, would you?” whispered Maria. “It’s rather frightful,” said Niall. “Like plugging someone with cocaine. What if it has a terrible effect on Caroline in after-life?” “I don’t care,” said Maria. “Not if it keeps her quiet now.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The Parasites

“Something we always want and never have. Something that is forever out of reach.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The Parasites

“They were flung open, and he could hear the applause in the far distance. He could not judge the sound. It always seemed to him the same from any theater. A steady, breaking sound. A sort of roar. It had always sounded the same for as far back as he could remember”
― Daphne du Maurier, The Parasites

“It’s queer,” she said, “but I don’t feel this is happening to me at all. This is some other person going through my day. It’s a dreadful feeling. I can’t explain it”
― Daphne du Maurier, The Parasites

“Most people would send their letters and telegrams to the Haymarket. The flowers too. When you came to think of it the whole business was horribly like having an operation. The telegrams, the flowers. And the long hours of waiting.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The Parasites

“Never dance again?” said Niall. “But what would happen? What would everybody do?” “Nothing would happen,” she said. “The theater is a funny world, you know. They forget one very soon.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The Parasites