2
" The smell of coffee, white dust, tobacco and burnt bread, flowers with a fragrance of wine, and the crimson fruit, soft and overripe. A girl looking over her bare shoulder, with a flash of a smile, gold ear-rings showing from thick black hair brushed away from her face, long arms, a cigarette between her lips. Night like a great dark blanket, voices murmuring at a street corner, the air warm with tired flowers, and a hum from the sea. "
― Daphne du Maurier , I'll Never Be Young Again
6
" The spaniel came up to me, sniffing at my legs, and I bent down and stroked his ears. “Well, Micky,” I said, “you surely remember me? Poor old Micky, good old Micky.” “Micky has got very fat,” said my mother. “Yes,” I said. “Micky is fond of his food,” said Grey. There was another pause and I went on stroking the spaniel’s ears. "
― Daphne du Maurier , I'll Never Be Young Again
9
" For me, the present agony of departure, the silent terror of leaving a place known to me if hated, the well-nigh impossible task of conquering the fear that possessed me. Not the fear of that hasty look round, the sudden plunge headlong and the giddy shock of hard, cold water, the river itself entering my lungs, rising in my throat, tossing me upon my back with my arms outflung—I could hear the sob strangled in my chest and the blood leave me—but fear of the certain knowledge that there was no returning, no possible means of escape, and no other thing beyond. "
― Daphne du Maurier , I'll Never Be Young Again
10
" This was my picture, and I wanted to become part of it too, to sleep there with the others on the shore, but they would not let me. I had to go away and live my life. I had no business to remain there lost in a dream. I had to break my mind away from it, I had to cover it, sadly, reverently, hide it in the shadowed untouched places of my memory. I would never forget. I would never permit my picture to become dusty and worn. After all that had been and all that was to come, I should still see it, the rugged cliffs, the little lighthouse standing beyond the razor edge of the Pointe du Raz, the broken Romanie desolate, alone, and lastly, beautiful and forlorn, the sleeping figures in the Baie des Trépassés. "
― Daphne du Maurier , I'll Never Be Young Again
12
" It was sinister, overpowering; it was like a troubled dream conjured by the evil thoughts of a past day. There was no suggestion of ultimate hope, and no possibility of escape. It was a terrible place. I sat up on the deck with my chin in my hands, looking in front of me thinking of nothing, my heart heavy, longing for some nameless thing that I could not explain even to myself. I did not want to feel depressed like this. I wanted to laugh, and not to care about a thought, and to be with people who did not matter, and to have some fun taking that girl ashore. I did not want to be in a lost mood, wretched and distressed. I wished Gudvangen was different, and the mountains wider apart, and the sun shining in a clear sky, and the blue water warm and shallow. "
― Daphne du Maurier , I'll Never Be Young Again
13
" I listened—much as you’re listening now, Dick, but it wasn’t from curiosity, it was something more. I hated the thought of this world that must be lived in—the sordid pitiful lives of men and women, who can’t get beyond their own bodies. I could see this girl, living as she did without the excuse of poverty—she wasn’t any prostitute having to keep herself, but spoiling her beauty, her health, and her own precious individuality, which is greater than anything in life, Dick, because some man had taught her to be self-indulgent. There wasn’t anything more in it than that. "
― Daphne du Maurier , I'll Never Be Young Again
15
" Every word he wrote would be strong with that sweet purity and simplicity that was his gift alone, placing him higher than any living poet, secure on his pedestal apart from the world, like a great silent god above the little dwarfs of men tossed hither and thither in the stream of life. From the crystal clearness of his brain the images became words, and the words became magic, and the whole was transcendent of beauty, one thread touching another, alike in their perfection and their certitude of immortality. Thus it seemed to me he was not a living figure of flesh and blood, but a monument to the national pride of his country, his England, and now and then he would bow gravely from his pedestal and scatter to the people a small quantity of his thought, which they would grub for on their poor rough ground, then clasp to their hungry hearts as treasure. "
― Daphne du Maurier , I'll Never Be Young Again
