P.D. James

Quotes

• “The weekend break had begun with the usual resentment and had continued with half-repressed ill humour. It was, of cours...”
• “When I am writing a novel, the setting, the characters, the action is clear in mind when I start -- so I believe. But it...”
• “Her aunt and uncle worked fifteen hours a day in their desperate attempt to keep the corner shop in profit, and their Su...”
• “There is much that I remember but which is painful to dwell on. I see no need to write about these things. They are over...”
• “I am fifty years old and I have never known what it is to love. I can write those words, know them to be true, but feel ...”
• “All Jane Austen novels have a common storyline: an attractive and virtuous young woman surmounts difficulties to achieve...”
• “It was reasonable to struggle, to suffer, perhaps even to die, for a more just, a more compassionate society, but not in...”
• “I can never see why people should be jealous. After all, youth isn't a matter of privilege, we all get the same share of...”
• “What do you mean by sound government?'Good public order, no corruption in high places, freedom from fear and war and cri...”
• “I don’t think He bargains.”“Oh yes He does. I may not be religious but I know my Bible. My mother saw to that. He bargai...”
• “Never tell an unnecessary lie; the truth has great authority. The cleverest murders have been caught, not because they t...”
• “Learn to write by doing it. Read widely and wisely. Increase your word power. Find your own individual voice though prac...”
• “If our sex life were determined by our first youthful experiments, most of the world would be doomed to celibacy. In no ...”
• “Charm is often despised but I can never see why. No one has it who isn't capable of genuinely liking others, at least at...”
• “Benton had a strong interest in helping to ensure that Warren's home life wasn't greatly disturbed: his wife was Cornish...”
• “Our parents' generation carried the past memorialized in paint, porcelain, and wood; we cast it off. Even our national h...”
• “The past can't now be altered, the future has yet to be lived, and consciously to experience every moment of the present...”
• “Right and wrong stood for him as immutable as the two poles. He had never wandered in that twilight country where the nu...”
• “The eyes were certainly memorable and beautiful, moist calves' eyes heavily lashed and with the same look of troubled pa...”
• “Unnatural death always provoked a peculiar unease, an uncomfortable realization that there were still some things that m...”
• “You desire the end but close your eyes to the means. You want the garden to be beautiful, provided that the smell of man...”
• “Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other ­people. Nothing that happens to a writer – howeve...”
• “(A murderer about their victim:)"He was an expert in vicarious death. I should like to have been there to see how he enj...”
• “Since even the most fastidious among us can rarely escape hearing salacious local gossip, it is as well to enjoy what ca...”
• “The secret of contentment is never to allow yourself to want anything which reason tells you you haven't a chance of get...”
• “He was discovering that even hatred died a little at the end. But it still lasted longer than desire, longer even than l...”
• “People were excited by violence. What, after all, was the sexual act but a voluntarily endured assault, a momentary deat...”
• “Absolute nakedness was intrusive, confusing to the senses. Paradoxically, it both revealed and diminished identity.”
• “I learned early and at that kitchen table that there are ways of avoiding, without guilt, the commitments of love.”
• “The television image sanctified, conferred identity. The more familiar the face, the more to be trusted.”
• “Feel, he told himself, feel, feel, feel. Even if what you feel is pain, only let yourself feel.”
• “If from infancy you treat children as gods, they are liable in adulthood to act as devils.”
• “There are few couples as unhappy as those who are too proud to admit their unhappiness.”
• “All the motives for murder are covered by four Ls: Love, Lust, Lucre and Loathing.”
• “The world of the terminally ill is the world of neither the living nor the dead.”
• “Time didn't heal, but it anesthetized. The human mind could only feel so much.”
• “She had quickly learned that to show unhappiness was to risk the loss of love.”
• “It is difficult to be generous-minded to those we have greatly harmed.”
• “What is there to be frightened of? We shall be dealing only with men.”
• “Authors always take rejection badly. They equate it with infanticide.”
• “You won't get love from a child if you don't give love.”
• “Violent death erase[s] more than the semblance of life.”
• “Every island to a child is a treasure island.”