P D James Quotes: top 100 famous quotes about P D James

P D James Quotes & Sayings

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We live in a society which salves its conscience more by helping the interestingly unfortunate than the dull deserving ... — P.D. James

Your concern would have more weight with us if you were sitting
as you could be sitting
on this side of the table. — P.D. James

History, which interprets the past to understand the present and confront the future is the least rewarding discipline for a dying species. — P.D. James

Human kindness is like a defective tap, the first gush may be impressive but the stream soon dries up. — P.D. James

If the screams of all earth's living creatures were one scream of pain, surely it would shake the stars. — P.D. James

If from infancy you treat children as gods, they are liable in adulthood to act as devils. — P.D. James

God gives every bird his worm, but He does not throw it into the nest. — P.D. James

Murder is the unique crime, the only one for which we can never make reparation to the victim. — P.D. James

The most successful marriages were always based on both partners feeling that they had done rather well for themselves. — P.D. James

I don't think writers choose the genre, the genre chooses us. I wrote out of the wish to create order out of disorder, the liking of a pattern. — P.D. James

The great tragedy of Alzheimer's disease, and the reason why we dread it, is that it leaves us with no defence, not even against those who love us. — P.D. James

Daniel supposed he had a secret life. Most people did; it was hardly possible to live without one. — P.D. James

Most of my life I have needed more time to be on my own. — P.D. James

Love, always love. Perhaps that's what we're all looking for. And if we don't get it early enough we panic in case we never shall. — P.D. James

It's easy to get a reputation for wisdom. It's only necessary to live long, speak little and do less. — P.D. James

What the detective story is about is not murder but the restoration of order. — P.D. James

Suicide is the most private and mysterious of acts, inexplicable because the chief actor is never there to explain it. — P.D. James

For me, the dead remain dead. If I couldn't believe that, I don't think I could go on living. — P.D. James

He was discovering that even hatred died a little at the end. But it still lasted longer than desire, longer even than love. — P.D. James

But gratitude can be the very devil sometimes, particularly if you have to be grateful for services you'd rather be without. — P.D. James

We have all sinned, Mr. Darcy, and we cannot look for mercy without showing it in our lives. — P.D. James

dresses, some of the girls in clothes which — P.D. James

We who write in English are fortunate to have the richest and most versatile language in the world. Respect it. — P.D. James

Not so much two ships passing in the night as two ships sailing together for a time but always bound for different ports. — P.D. James

You never forget the people who were kind to you in childhood, do you, sir? — P.D. James

Dalgliesh was too experienced to assume that fear implied guilt; it was often the most innocent who were the most terrified. — P.D. James

SOYINKA WON THE NOBEL PRIZE
ACHEBE, LITERARY COMMANDER
P.D. JAMES, WE LOVE HER
AGATHA CHRISTIE, QUEEN OF CRIME — S.A. David

Metaphysical speculation is about as pointless as a discussion on the meaning of one's lungs. They're for breathing. — P.D. James

Darcy took the view that if family amity required him to meet people with whom he had little in common, it were best done at their expense not his. — P.D. James

Feel, he told himself, feel, feel, feel. Even if what you feel is pain, only let yourself feel. — P.D. James

People should make up their minds whether to live or to die and do one or the other with the least inconvenience to others. — P.D. James

I have enough trouble living with my own neurosis without coping with other people's. — P.D. James

Time didn't heal, but it anesthetized. The human mind could only feel so much. — P.D. James

Death ... obliterates family resemblance as it does personality: there is no affinity between the living and the dead. — P.D. James

Absolute nakedness was intrusive, confusing to the senses. Paradoxically, it both revealed and diminished identity. — P.D. James

We should not, perhaps, assume that nature has a purpose. — P.D. James

Fear is the devil to hide. — P.D. James

We all die alone. We shall endure death as once we endured birth. You can't share either experience. — P.D. James

Children are always ready to believe that adult catastrophes are their fault. — P.D. James

The very old, he thought, make our past. Once they go it seems for a moment that neither it nor we have any real existence. — P.D. James

Delightful and sensitive boys have a habit of growing into insensitive and far-from-agreeable men. — P.D. James

It is difficult to be generous-minded to those we have greatly harmed. — P.D. James

I knew the facts of death before I knew the facts of life. There never was a time when I didn't see the skull beneath the skin. — P.D. James

Gossip about the feelings of others when we cannot fully understand them, and they may not understand them themselves, can be a cause of distress. — P.D. James

When I heard Humpty Dumpty I wondered did he fall or was he pushed? — P.D. James

Of all the things that human beings did together, the sexual act was the one with the most various of reasons. — P.D. James

All the motives for murder are covered by four Ls: Love, Lust, Lucre and Loathing. — P.D. James

It is always easy to question the judgement of others in matters of which we may be imperfectly informed. — P.D. James

Books of quotations ... afford me one of the most undemanding but satisfying forms of reading pleasure. — P.D. James

There comes a time when every scientist, even God, has to write off an experiment. — P.D. James

If he set out right now to make a list of the things he had taken for granted in his life, he'd go broke buying paper. — James P. Blaylock

The greatest mystery of all is the human heart, — P.D. James

Man is diminished if he lives without knowledge of his past; without hope of a future he becomes a beast. — P.D. James

When I heard, Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, I thought, Did he fall or was he pushed? — P.D. James

pedimented doors to right and left, an oil painting of the — P.D. James

A regime which combines perpetual surveillance with total indulgence is hardly conducive to healthy development. — P.D. James

Gossip ... was like any other commodity in the marketplace. You received it only if you had something of value to give. — P.D. James

A politician is required to listen to humbug, talk humbug, condone humbug. The most we can hope for is that we don't actually believe it. — P.D. James

Success in moderation was no doubt better for the character than failure, but too much of it and he would lose his cutting edge. — P.D. James

Henry James's definition of the purpose of a novel: To help the human heart to know itself. — P.D. James

Old age makes caricatures of us all. — P.D. James

No government can act in advance of the moral will of the people. — P.D. James

First-class travel, provided one hasn't to pay for it oneself, is the most insidiously addictive of life's luxuries. — P.D. James

Every island to a child is a treasure island. — P.D. James

Surely it is important that people who love each other should be able to speak openly and truly about matters which touch them. — P.D. James

Crime fiction confirms our belief, despite some evidence to the contrary, that we live in a rational, comprehensible, and moral universe. — P.D. James

Mrs. Maxie wondered whether anyone could be as stupid as Sir Reynold appeared to be — P.D. James

What was so terrible about grief was not grief itself, but that one got over it. — P.D. James

We are often more merciful to our animals [cats] than we are to each other. — P.D. James

We need, all of us, to be in control of our lives, and we shrink them until they're small and mean enough so that we feel in control. — P.D. James

Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft. — P.D. James

One does not kill to avoid social inconvenience. — P.D. James

The detective story is not about murder," P. D. James has written, "but the restoration of order. — Anonymous

I don't want anyone to look to me, not for protection, not for happiness, not for love, not for anything. — P.D. James

Ambition, if it were to be savored, let alone achieved, had to be rooted in possibility. — P.D. James

The equally is a political theory, but no a practical politics. — P.D. James

Creativity doesn't flourish in an atmosphere of despotism, coercion and fear. — P.D. James

The secret of contentment is never to allow yourself to want anything which reason tells you you haven't a chance of getting. — P.D. James

No literary form is more revealing, more spontaneous or more individual than a letter. — P.D. James

Perfect love may cast our fear, but fear is remarkably potent in casting out love. — P.D. James

People were excited by violence. What, after all, was the sexual act but a voluntarily endured assault, a momentary death? — P.D. James

We can forgive anything as long as it isn't done to us. — P.D. James

Guilt is more commonly felt by the innocent than by the culpable, — P.D. James

I was like a little boy showing off my toys, desperate to win approval. — P.D. James

The cultured cop! I thought they were peculiar to detective novels. — P.D. James

Authors always take rejection badly. They equate it with infanticide. — P.D. James

Don't just plan to write - write. It is only by writing, not dreaming about it, that we develop our own style. — P.D. James

It is some centuries since we accepted that a woman has a soul. Is it not time that we accepted that she also has a mind? — P.D. James

He'd given up squid merchanting when he'd found that the creatures inhabited his dreams, all leggy and cold. — James P. Blaylock

Equality is a political theory not a practical policy ... — P.D. James

Write what you need to write, not what is currently popular or what you think will sell. — P.D. James

(A murderer about their victim
He was an expert in vicarious death. I should like to have been there to see how he enjoyed the real thing. — P.D. James

The world is changed not by the self-regarding, but by men and women prepared to make fools of themselves. — P.D. James

What is there to be frightened of? We shall be dealing only with men. — P.D. James

Violent death erase[s] more than the semblance of life. — P.D. James

It shows considerable wisdom to know what you want in life and then to direct all your energies towards getting it. — P.D. James

The attempt to analyse was, of course, an attempt at exorcism. — P.D. James

I still occasionally need to struggle but I now fear it less. The weapons I fight it with are also my consolations: books, music, food, wine, nature. — P.D. James

She had quickly learned that to show unhappiness was to risk the loss of love. — P.D. James

Since even the most fastidious among us can rarely escape hearing salacious local gossip, it is as well to enjoy what cannot be avoided. — P.D. James