P.D. James Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 100 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by P.D. James.
Famous Quotes By P.D. James
Perhaps it's only when people are dead that we can safely show how much we cared about them. We know that it's too late then for them to do anything about it. — 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
I love you, Guy, and I think I shall go on loving you, but I'm not in love. I've had that and it was a torment, a humiliation and a warning. So now I'm settling for a quiet life with someone I respect and am very fond of and want to spend my life with. — P.D. James
Henry James's definition of the purpose of a novel: To help the human heart to know itself. — P.D. James
He still attended every Sunday. It was as much a part of his routine as buying the same two Sunday newspapers at the same stall on his way home, the luncheon taken from the fridge and heated up in obedience to Erik's written instructions, the short afternoon walk through the park, then the hour of sleep and the evening of television. The — P.D. James
She strutted into the room, armour-plated in white linen, belligerent as a battleship. The bib of her apron, starched rigid as a board, curved against a formidable bosom on which she wore her nursing badges like medals of war. — P.D. James
And would she herself have married Darcy had he been a penniless curate or a struggling attorney? ... Elizabeth knew that she was not formed for the sad contrivances of poverty. — P.D. James
I thought of inviting you to my other club but you know how it is. Lunching there is a useful way of reminding people that you're still alive, but the members will come up and congratulate you on the fact. — 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
I love the idea of bringing order out of disorder which is what the mystery is about. I like the way in which it affirms the sanity of human life and exorcises irrational guilts. — P.D. James
The library at Pemberley was as freely open to her as it was to Darcy, and with his tactful and loving encouragement she had read more widely and with greater enjoyment and comprehension in the last six years than in all the past fifteen, augmenting an education which, she now understood, had never been other than rudimentary. — P.D. James
With the death of what Sydney Smith described as rational religon and the proponents of what remains sending out such confusing and uncertain messages, all civilised people have to be ethicists. We must work out our own salvation with diligence based on what we believe. — 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
Love. Is that so very important? You were a teacher, you ought to know. Is it?" "It's vital. If a child has it for the first ten years, hardly anything else matters. If he hasn't, then nothing does. — P.D. James
Daniel supposed he had a secret life. Most people did; it was hardly possible to live without one. — P.D. James
I find it extraordinary that a straightforward if inelegant device for ensuring the survival of the species should involve human beings in such emotional turmoil. Does sex have to be taken so seriously? — P.D. James
But what do you believe? I don't just mean religion. What are you sure of?"
"That once I was not and that now I am. That one day I shall no longer be. — P.D. James
Right and wrong stood for him as immutable as the two poles. He had never wandered in that twilight country where the nuances of evil and good cast their perplexing shadows. — P.D. James
One of her parlour borders, Miss Harriet Smith, married a local farmer, Robert Martin, and is very happily settled. They have three daughters and a son, but the doctor has told her it is unlikely that further children can be expected and she and her husband are anxious to have another son as playmate to their own. Mr and Mrs Knightley of Donwell Abbey are the most important couple in Highbury, and Mrs Knightley is a friend of Mrs Martin and has always taken a keen interest in her children. — P.D. James
Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious.
[Ten rules for writing fiction, The Guardian, 20 February 2010 (with Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Helen Dunmore, Geoff Dyer, Anne Enright, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Esther Freud, Neil Gaiman, David Hare, and AL Kennedy)] — P.D. James
It was reasonable to struggle, to suffer, perhaps even to die, for a more just, a more compassionate society, but not in a world with no future where, all to soon, the very words "justice," "compassion," "society," "struggle," "evil," would be unheard echoes on an empty air. — P.D. James
A man who lives with nature is used to violence and is companionable with death. There is more violence in an English hedgerow than in the meanest streets of a great city. — P.D. James
It is interesting how often unintelligent, even stupid, women manage their emotional lives more satisfactorily than do their cleverer sisters. — P.D. James
We were polluting the planet with our numbers; if we were breeding less it was to be welcomed. — P.D. James
A letter is paradoxically the most revealing and the most deceptive of confessional revelations. We all have our inconsistencies, prejudices, irrationalities which, although strongly felt at the time, may be transitory. A letter captures the mood of the moment. The transitory becomes immutably fixed, part of the evidence for the prosecution or the defence. — P.D. James
Dictating condolences to the mother of a murdered husband whom you've been busily cuckolding for the last three years would take more than his limited social vocabulary. — P.D. James
A nation that can't remember its dead will soon cease to be worth dying for. — P.D. James
Nothing and no one will separate us, not life nor death, nor principalities, nor powers, nor anything that is of the heavens nor anything that is of the earth. — P.D. James
When I heard Humpty Dumpty I wondered did he fall or was he pushed? — P.D. James
Benton had a strong interest in helping to ensure that Warren's home life wasn't greatly disturbed: his wife was Cornish, and that morning Warren had arrived with six Cornish pasties of remarkable flavour and succulence. — 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
This planet is doomed anyway. Eventually the sun will explode or cool and one small insignificant particle of the universe will disappear with only a tremble. — 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
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
The tragedy of loss is not that we grieve, but that we cease to grieve, and then perhaps the dead are dead at last. — P.D. James
Pleasure need not be less keen because there will be centuries of springs to come, their blossom unseen by human eyes, the walls will crumble, the trees die and rot, the gardens revert to weeds and grass, because all beauty will outlive the human intelligence which records, enjoys and celebrates it. — P.D. James
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
[Mr. Collins] began by stating that he could find no words to express his shock and abhorrence, and then proceeded to find a great number, few of them appropriate and none of them helpful. — P.D. James
What mattered at fifty-eight was what had mattered at eighteen: breeding and good bone structure. — P.D. James
Childhood is the one prison from which there's no escape, the one sentence from which there's no appeal. We all serve our time. — P.D. James
We English are good at forgiving our enemies; it releases us from the obligation of liking our friends. — P.D. James
Early this morning, 1 January 2021, three minutes after midnight, the last human being to be born on earth was killed in a pub brawl in a suburb of Buenos Aires, aged twenty-five years, two months and twelve days. — 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
But perhaps what mattered at eighty was habit, the body no longer interested in sex, the mind no longer interested in speculation, the smaller things in life mattering more than the large and, in the end, the slow realization that nothing really mattered at all. — P.D. James
It is doubtful whether Mrs Bennet missed the company of her second daughter, but her husband certainly did. Elizabeth had always been his favourite child. — P.D. James
They had lived to see their simple patriotism derided, their morality despised, their savings devalued. They caused no trouble. Millions of pounds of public money wasn't regularly siphoned into their neighbourhoods in the hope of bribing, cajoling or coercing them into civic virtue. If they protested that their cities had become alien, their children taught in overcrowded schools where 90 per cent of the children spoke no English, they were lectured about the cardinal sin of racism by those more expensively and comfortably circumstanced. Unprotected by accountants, they were the milch-cows of the rapacious Revenue. No lucrative industry of social concern and psychological analysis had grown up to analyse and condone their inadequacies on the grounds of deprivation or poverty. — P.D. James
The attempt to analyse was, of course, an attempt at exorcism. — P.D. James
I can still picture the two sisters sitting together on the terrace, well wrapped up against the chill, one with her terminal cancer, the other with her cardiac asthma and arthritis, envy and resentment forgotten as they faced the great equalizer of death. — P.D. James
He said: "It's possible to fight intolerance, stupidity and fanaticism when they come separately. When you get all three together it's probably wiser to get out, if only to preserve your sanity." They — 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
It is always easy to question the judgement of others in matters of which we may be imperfectly informed. — 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
Dalgliesh reflected that one of the minor hazards of a murder investigation was the inordinate amount of caffeine he was expected to consume. But he wanted the interview to be as informal as possible, and food or drink always helped. — P.D. James
A regime which combines perpetual surveillance with total indulgence is hardly conducive to healthy development. — P.D. James
Children are always ready to believe that adult catastrophes are their fault. — P.D. James
Snapping shut his mobile, Dalgliesh reflected that murder, a unique crime for which no reparation is ever possible, imposes it own compulsions as well as it's conventions. He doubted whether Macklefield [the murder victim's Will attorney] would have interrupted his country weekend for a less sensational crime. As a young officer he, too, had been touched, if unwillingly and temporarily, by the power of murder to attract even while it appalled and repelled. He had watched how people involved as innocent bystanders, provided they were unburdened by grief or suspicion, were engrossed by homicide, drawn inexorably to the place where the crime had occurred in fascinated disbelief. The crowd and the media who served them had not yet congregated outside the wrought-iron gates of the Manor. But they would come, and he doubted whether Chandler-Powell's [owner of the Manor where the murder was committed] private security team would be able to do more than inconvenience them. — P.D. James
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
There comes a time when every scientist, even God, has to write off an experiment. — P.D. James
Can we ever break free of the devices and desires of our own hearts? Might not our conscience be telling us what we most want to hear? — 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
You'd like the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That must be the most futile oath anyone ever swears. — P.D. James
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
One does not kill to avoid social inconvenience. — P.D. James
He had begun the diary less as a record of his life (for whom and why? What life?) than as a regular and self-indulgent exploration, a means of makings sense of the past years, part catharsis, part comforting affirmation. — P.D. James
When I heard, Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, I thought, Did he fall or was he pushed? — P.D. James
Most of my life I have needed more time to be on my own. — P.D. James
If all power corrupts, then a doctor, who literally holds life and death in his hands, must be at particular risk. — P.D. James
Fear is the devil to hide. — P.D. James
What do you mean by sound government?'
Good public order, no corruption in high places, freedom from fear and war and crime, a reasonably equitable distribution of wealth and resources, concern for the individual life.'
Then we haven't got sound government. — P.D. James
All these problems [deciding cases] are easier for people who believe in God. Those of us who don't or can't have to do the best we can. That's what the law is, the best we can do. Human justice is imperfect, but it's the only justice we have. — P.D. James
The television image sanctified, conferred identity. The more familiar the face, the more to be trusted. — P.D. James
I don't want anyone to look to me, not for protection, not for happiness, not for love, not for anything. — P.D. James
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 and must be accepted, made sense of and forgiven, afforded no more than their proper place in a long life in which I have always known that happiness is a gift, not a right. — P.D. James
By 1803, therefore, Mrs Bennet could be regarded as a happy woman so far as her nature allowed and had even been known to sit through a four-course dinner in the presence of Sir William and Lady Lucas without once referring to the iniquity of the entail. — P.D. James
If our sex life were determined by our first youthful experiments, most of the world would be doomed to celibacy. In no area of human experience are human beings more convinced that something better can be had only if they persevere. — 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
Miss Bingley was particularly anxious at the time not to leave the capital. Her pursuit of a widowed peer of great wealth was entering a most hopeful phase. Admittedly without his peerage and his money he would have been regarded as the most boring man in London, but one cannot expect to be called "your grace" without some inconvenience. — P.D. James
There are few activities so agreeable as spending a friend's money to your own satisfaction and his benefit. — P.D. James
Wars may be fought by decent men, but they're not won by them. — P.D. James
I thought I understood his kind: the petty bureaucrats of tyranny, men who relish the carefully measured meed of power permitted to them, who need to walk in the aura of manufactured fear, to know that the fear precedes them as they enter a room and will linger like a smell after they have left, but who have neither the sadism nor the courage for the ultimate cruelty. But they need their part of the action. It isn't sufficient for them, as it is for most of us, to stand a little way off to watch the crosses on the hill. — P.D. James
If this were fiction, could even the most brilliant novelist contrive to make credible so short a period in which pride had been subdued and prejudice overcome? — P.D. James
What was so terrible about grief was not grief itself, but that one got over it. — P.D. James
The emotion he felt towards her was as mysterious as it was irrational. He needed to understand it, to define its nature, to analyse what he knew was beyond analysis. But some things now he did know, and perhaps they were all he needed to know. He wished her only good. He would put her good before his own. He could no longer be separate himself from her. He would die for her life. — P.D. James
Any visitor to an historic country town or city quickly becomes aware in his or her peregrinations that the most attractive houses in the centre are invariably the offices of lawyers. — P.D. James
Every island to a child is a treasure island. — P.D. James
(Did you love your wife) I convinced myself I did when I married. I willed myself into the appropriate feelings without knowing what the appropriate feelings were. I endowed her with qualities she did not have and then despised her for not having them. Afterwards I might have learned to love her if I had thought more of her needs and less of my own. — P.D. James
E began drinking heavily and lived in a way which a friend described as making sense "only if he had no expectations of being alive much beyond Thursday". — 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
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
Learn to write by doing it. Read widely and wisely. Increase your word power. Find your own individual voice though practicing constantly. Go through the world with your eyes and ears open and learn to express that experience in words. — P.D. James
Publishers don't nurse you; they buy and sell you. — P.D. James