P. D. James Quotes - Page 5

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• Murder is the unique crime, the only one for which we can never make reparation to the victim.

  P. D. James

  Unique, Murder, Crime

  P. D. James (2011). “Time to Be in Earnest”, p.182, Faber & Faber

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• There are few couples as unhappy as those who are too proud to admit their unhappiness.

  P. D. James

  Couple, Unhappy, Proud

  P.D. James (2012). “Unnatural Causes”, p.14, Simon and Schuster

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• read widely, not in order to copy someone else's style, but to learn to appreciate and recognize good writing and to see how the best writers have achieved their result. Poor writing is, unfortunately, infectious and should be avoided.

  P. D. James

  Writing, Order, Appreciate

  P. D. James (2011). “Time to Be in Earnest”, p.292, Faber & Faber

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• There is no point in regretting any part of the past. The past can't now be altered, the future has yet to be lived, and consciously to experience every moment of the present is the only way to gain at least the illusion of immortality.

  P. D. James

  Regret, Past, Way

  P. D. James (2011). “Time to Be in Earnest”, p.56, Faber & Faber

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• gossip ... was like any other commodity in the marketplace. You received it only if you had something of value to give.

  P. D. James

  Giving, Gossip, Commodity

  P. D. James (2010). “A Taste for Death”, p.292, Vintage

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• Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious.

  P. D. James

  Writing, Bad Writing, Discrimination

  "Ten rules for writing fiction". www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2010.

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• Without the hope of posterity, for our race if not for ourselves, without the assurance that we being dead yet live, all pleasures of the mind and senses sometimes seem to me no more than pathetic and crumbling defences shored up against our ruin.

  P. D. James

  Race, Mind, Ruins

  P. D. James (2010). “The Children of Men”, p.21, Vintage

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• A picnic may well be a metaphor for life. The essentials for happiness are the right company, moderate if sanguine expectations and a reasonable standard of physical sustenance and comfort, the whole being bedeviled by the belief that there is always something better to be had if only one presses on.

  P. D. James

  Expectations, Comfort, Essentials

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• Children live in occupied territory. The brave and the foolhardy openly rebel against authority, whether harsh or benign. But most tread warily, outwardly accommodating themselves to alien mores and edicts while living in secret their iconoclastic and subversive lives.

  P. D. James

  Children, Brave, Secret

  P. D. James (2007). “Time to Be in Earnest”, p.20, Vintage

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• In 1930s mysteries, all sorts of motives were credible which aren't credible today, especially motives of preventing guilty sexual secrets from coming out. Nowadays, people sell their guilty sexual secrets.

  P. D. James

  People, Secret, Today

  FaceBook post by P.D. James from Sep 07, 2011

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• The weekend break had begun with the usual resentment and had continued with half-repressed ill humour. It was, of course, his fault. He had been more ready to hurt his wife's feelings and deprive his daughter than inconvenience a pub bar full of strangers. He wished there could be one memory of his dead child which wasn't tainted with guilt and regret.

  P. D. James

  Daughter, Hurt, Children

  P. D. James (2010). “The Children of Men”, p.101, Vintage

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• I learned early and at that kitchen table that there are ways of avoiding, without guilt, the commitments of love.

  P. D. James

  Commitment, Kitchen, Guilt

  P. D. James (2010). “The Children of Men”, p.40, Vintage

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• Most of my life I have needed more time to be on my own.

  P. D. James

  Loneliness, Solitude, More Time

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• Death ... obliterates family resemblance as it does personality: there is no affinity between the living and the dead.

  P. D. James

  Personality, Doe, Affinity

  P.D. James (2012). “Death of an Expert Witness”, p.182, Simon and Schuster

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• I wonder if childhood is ever really happy. Just as well, perhaps. To be blissfully happy so young would leave one always seeking to recapture the unobtainable. Like those people who were always happiest at school or university. Always going back. No reunion ever missed. It always seemed to me rather pathetic.

  P. D. James

  School, People, Childhood

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• the unforgivable was usually the most easily forgiven.

  P. D. James

  Forgiveness, Unforgivable, Forgiven

  P.D. James (2015). “P. D. James’s Adam Dalgliesh Mysteries: Cover Her Face, A Mind to Murder, Unnatural Causes, Shroud for a Nightingale, The Black Tower, and Death of an Expert Witness”, p.1607, Simon and Schuster

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

  P. D. James

  Believe, Thinking, Goes On

  P. D. James (2011). “Devices and Desires”, p.174, Vintage

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

  P. D. James

  People, Violence, Excited

  P.D. James (2012). “Innocent Blood”, p.378, Simon and Schuster

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• I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism . . . The only way to react is to get up in the morning and start the day by saying four or five vastly politically incorrect things before breakfast!

  P. D. James

  Morning, Believe, Political

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• It is difficult to be generous-minded to those we have greatly harmed.

  P. D. James

  Difficult, Generous

  P. D. James (2010). “The Children of Men”, p.166, Vintage

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• There are two options for any society: total prohibition as in a totalitarian state, or total license. Both avoid the ardours of decision. Both have the attraction of certainty. The difficult option is to decide where the line should be drawn and this, surely, is the responsiblity of any civilized and democratic country.

  P. D. James

  Country, Two, Decision

  P. D. James (2011). “Time to Be in Earnest”, p.104, Faber & Faber

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

  P. D. James

  Suicide, Actors, Mysterious

  P. D. James (2010). “A Taste for Death”, p.278, Vintage

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• No literary form is more revealing, more spontaneous or more individual than a letter.

  P. D. James

  Letters, Spontaneous, Individual

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