Mrs. Danvers quotes from Rebecca (1940)

Mrs. Danvers

You wouldn't think she'd been gone so long, would you? Sometimes, when I walk along the corridor, I fancy I hear her just behind me, like a quick light step. I couldn't mistake it anywhere, not only in this room, but in all the rooms in the house. I can almost hear it now. Do you think the dead come back and watch the living?

2nd Mrs. de Winter

I don't believe it.

Mrs. Danvers

Sometimes, I wonder if she doesn't come back here to Manderley, to watch you and Mr. de Winter together. You look tired. Why don't you stay here and rest, and listen to the sea? It's so soothing. Listen to it. Listen.

Mrs. Danvers

I watched you go down just as I watched her a year ago. Even in the same dress you couldn't compare.

2nd Mrs. de Winter

You knew it. You knew that she wore it. And yet you deliberately stressed that I wear it. Why do you hate me? What have I done to you that you should ever hate me so?

Mrs. Danvers

You tried to take her place. You let him marry you. I've seen his face, his eyes. They're the same as those first weeks after she died. I used to listen to him, walking up and down, up and down, all night long, night after night, thinking of her. Suffering torture because he lost her.

2nd Mrs. de Winter

I don't want to know. I don't want to know.

Mrs. Danvers

You thought you could be Mrs. de Winter. Live in her house. Walk in her steps. Take the things that were hers. But she's too strong for you. You can't fight her. No one ever got the better of her. Never. Never. She was beaten in the end, but it wasn't a man. It wasn't a woman. It was the sea.

2nd Mrs. de Winter

Oh, stop it! Stop it! Oh, stop it!