Myself When Young Quotes

“We are all ghosts of yesterday, and the phantom of tomorrow awaits us alike in sunshine or in shadow, dimly perceived at times, never entirely lost.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Myself When Young: The Shaping of a Writer

“Only a lover of animals will understand the sudden feeling of loss, of emptiness, and the intuitive bond which exists between man and dog, has always existed from the beginning and will, please God, continue to the end.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Myself When Young: The Shaping of a Writer

“Who can ever affirm, or deny that the houses which have sheltered us as children, or as adults, and our predecessors too, do not have embedded in their walls, one with the dust and cobwebs, one with the overlay of fresh wallpaper and paint, the imprint of what-has-been, the suffering, the joy?”
― Daphne du Maurier, Myself When Young

“It's funny,' I noted in the diary, 'how often I seem to build a story around one sentence, nearly always the last one, too. The themes are a bit depressing but I just can't get rid of that.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Myself When Young: The Shaping of a Writer

“I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that freedom is the only thing that matters to me at all. Also utter irresponsibility! Never to have to obey any laws or rules, only certain standards one sets for oneself. I want to revolt, as an individual, against everything that 'ties.' If only one could live one's life unhampered in any way, not getting in knots and twisting up. There must be a free way, without making a muck of it all.”
― Daphne Du Maurier, Myself When Young: The Shaping of a Writer

“Men and women who have never lived make finer captives on the printed page, or if they have lived, and are historical, then the very knowledge that they belong to a past we have not known ourselves induces fancy.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Myself When Young: The Shaping of a Writer

“The only time I got into trouble was when I forged M's signature on the weekly report we had to take home every Friday and take back to school again signed by one of our parents. The reason I did so was that M happened to be out at the time and I thought I could save myself trouble.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Myself When Young: The Shaping of a Writer

“(Angela: ‘You haven’t gone off him already?’) I didn’t succeed. I wonder what I should have said had I known that over twenty years later he would act the part of wicked Lord Rockingham in the film adaptation of one of my own novels, Frenchman’s Creek, and in pursuit of the heroine, Dona, crash down a staircase to his death? Possibly The Alternative, had it ever been written, might have given him a finer role.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Myself When Young

“A diary, the first of a long succession, was given to me for Christmas 1920, and the entry for New Year’s Day might have been written by a child of five. Here was no budding woman, ripe for sex instruction, but someone who perhaps had been left behind on the Never Never Island in Peter Pan. I quote: ‘New Year’s Day. I oversleep myself. We go for a long walk in the morning and stay indoors in the afternoon. It is my teddy-bear’s birthday. I give a party for her. Angela is very annoying. Jeanne and I box, and then I pretend I am a midshipman hunting slaves. Daddy says I have a stoop. I begin to read a book called With Allenby in Palestine.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Myself When Young

“Although there was nothing to do there, no one to play with, somehow it did not matter, I was happy, and at peace. Billy would be up in her bedroom writing letters—she had so many friends, she was always writing letters—she had so many friends, she was always writing letters—or she would talk to her pekinese dog Ching, which she adored, and which tried to bite her every time she groomed him.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Myself When Young

“That Browning man kept passing in his boat, but didn’t attempt to do anything. Don’t blame him. I sat around and read.’ (The current book was Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.)”
― Daphne du Maurier, Myself When Young

“In November, Foy Quiller-Couch and I went on another riding expedition, this time to Bodmin moors, putting up at the wayside hostelry, Jamaica Inn.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Myself When Young

“If Michael Joseph of Curtis Brown tells me he doesn’t like it, or I must rewrite, he can go to hell. I can’t go back to it any more.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Myself When Young

“I had only one plan, which was to finish the book, and Jennifer was turning out to be a hard-headed young woman, quite different from how I had intended her. This must surely mean I had no control over my characters.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Myself When Young

“But Part Four would not be easy. The last member of the four generations, Jane Slade’s great-granddaughter Jennifer, was going to be rather tiresome. I was not sure what to do with her. Could it be that I had lost interest in the whole story?”
― Daphne du Maurier, Myself When Young

“November 1929, and I was still pegging away at Part Three, with a lump on my third finger from holding my pen too tightly. A pity I didn’t own a typewriter.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Myself When Young

“I shall live and die here in Cornwall and do my best to write about them. What’s the use of being clever and witty? It’s a heart that is the needful thing. P.S. I wish I was a really good writer.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Myself When Young

“Alas, the countless links are strong, That bind us to our clay, The loving spirit lingers long, And would not pass away.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Myself When Young

“A line from a poem by Emily Brontë has come to me clearly, and I shall call my book The Loving Spirit. This, I feel, is what I wish it to be. And always, no matter what people say to me, there must be Truth. No striving after cleverness, nor cheap and readymade wit. Sincerity—beauty—purity.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Myself When Young

“Mournful, mournful. I wanted to be alone, but the others would laugh and talk. Always the past, just out of reach, waiting to be recaptured. Why did I feel so sad thinking of a past I had never known?”
― Daphne du Maurier, Myself When Young

“In retrospect, how naïve we all were, young and middle-aged alike, in 1929! Kisses in the bar, and in the snow. It was really shocking.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Myself When Young

“Angela and Jeanne were content with their lives. Why did I have to be different? We three got on so well, we never quarrelled, and could discuss every subject under the sun; yet they had no desire to break away, as I did.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Myself When Young

“One family only had lived within her walls. One family who had given her life. They had been born there, they had loved, they had quarrelled, they had suffered, they had died. And out of these emotions she had woven a personality for herself, she had become what their thoughts and their desires had made her. And now the story was ended. She lay there in her last sleep. Nothing remained for her but to decay and die. Menabilly, haunting, mysterious.… ‘The place has taken hold of me,’ I wrote in the diary.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Myself When Young

“And looking north, inland from the Gribben, I could just make out the grey roof of a house there, set in its own grounds amongst trees. Yes, Angela and I were told. That would be Menabilly. Belongs to Dr Rashleigh, but he seldom lives there.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Myself When Young

“I wrote on the birthday itself, ‘and as for being twenty-one, I’ll leave it at that. I can’t see that years make any difference, or days, or hours, it’s things that happen to one that matter. I shan’t look back. No guttering candles and dripping wicks for me. When I go let me go quickly, still a bright flame, no flickering! Meanwhile Adams and I celebrated my majority by taking Annabelle Lee out to sea and catching 13 pollock, which was a good start for the boat.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Myself When Young

“But—and this was not so good—Viola, M and D had apparently gone with Ivor Novello to look at the silly film test I had done a year ago, and were much impressed. Viola even rang up from London about it, and told me there were plans for the two of us, with Ivor, to go to Budapest in the summer and do some film. A letter from M followed, full of this idea. Flattering, perhaps, but what about ties? I did not want to have a film career. ‘It would mean contracts, not being able to go away when I wanted to, no Fowey, no boats, and all for what? A little money and a lot of gush, and tiring, tedious work. I’m not at all keen. Besides, it takes four days to get to Budapest, and four days back, all in a beastly train.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Myself When Young

“I am considered silly, selfish and incredible by all concerned. No use in explaining. I prefer to live happily in discomfort here in beloved Fowey to living comfortably, query, and discontentedly in indifferent Hampstead. That’s all. I’m used to being alone. Why fuss? Why struggle? It’s funny that no one seems really to understand my craving for solitude, that I am sincerely, and without posing, happiest when alone. It’s my natural state.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Myself When Young

“And on the day we left, ‘It’s heart-breaking. To go away from this, the one place that I love. Everything is covered in dust-sheets, windows shuttered, it reminds me of the last act of The Cherry Orchard. I go over the whole place before we leave—visit every corner of the garden and gaze for a long while at the sea. I tell them all that I shall be back soon and they understand. It all belongs to me now. One last trip in Cora Ann down-harbour before we go. Then the train.… Oh God, to exchange this for dreary bloody London.…”
― Daphne du Maurier, Myself When Young

“Yes, of course it was kind, but why must I be reminded of the fact, and would I ever write enough short stories to sell, and so make some money that would be mine, all mine, so that I could pay the cook and buy my own food, and keep myself and be truly independent? It just had to happen. I refused to be beaten.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Myself When Young

“She explained, gently. Then I read the letter for myself. D, returning home one night from the theatre, found no Jock in his basket. M told him he was nowhere to be found when she had herself gone upstairs to bed. Intuition made D walk down in darkness through the garden. He found Jock, drowned, lying in the rain-water tank below the greenhouse. He must have chased a cat which had sprung into the bushes above, fallen into the tank, which was full of water, and been unable to climb out. Once again I saw the Cumberland stream, and the little body on its back; this time I had not been there to rescue him. And by a strange, eerie coincidence the old dog, Brutus, had called at home the same day to look for me, and on returning home had been run over and killed. ‘They knew. They both knew,’ I said to Fernande. ‘Knew what?’ she asked. ‘The two dogs. That they would never see me again. It was a sort of sacrifice.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Myself When Young