P
P.D. James
43 quotes
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.”