P. D. James Quotes

…It was embarrassing now to recall with what little regret he had let slip his pleasures and preoccu...

No one has it who isn't capable of genuinely liking others at least at the actual moment of meeting...

I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down ...

The secret of contentment is never to allow yourself to want anything which reason tells you you hav...

He was discovering that even hatred died a little at the end. But it still lasted longer than desire...

The weekend break had begun with the usual resentment and had continued with half-repressed ill humo...

Never tell an unnecessary lie; the truth has great authority. The cleverest murders have been caught...

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

Authors always take rejection badly. They equate it with infanticide.

What do you mean by sound government?'Good public order, no corruption in high places, freedom from ...

SIR DANIEL was a large man, broad of shoulder...his eyes were rather small above the double pouches ...

Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other ­people. Nothing that happens ...

Violent death erase[s] more than the semblance of life.

Since even the most fastidious among us can rarely escape hearing salacious local gossip, it is as w...

Right and wrong stood for him as immutable as the two poles. He had never wandered in that twilight ...

It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life...

Learn to write by doing it. Read widely and wisely. Increase your word power. Find your own individu...

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

(A murderer about their victim:)"He was an expert in vicarious death. I should like to have been the...

What about his style?" asked Dalgliesh who was beginning to think that his reading had been unnecess...

The past can't now be altered, the future has yet to be lived, and consciously to experience every m...

What is there to be frightened of? We shall be dealing only with men.

She had quickly learned that to show unhappiness was to risk the loss of love.

I can never see why people should be jealous. After all, youth isn't a matter of privilege, we all g...

The eyes were certainly memorable and beautiful, moist calves' eyes heavily lashed and with the same...

You won't get love from a child if you don't give love.

The television image sanctified, conferred identity. The more familiar the face, the more to be trus...

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

Absolute nakedness was intrusive, confusing to the senses. Paradoxically, it both revealed and dimin...

People were excited by violence. What, after all, was the sexual act but a voluntarily endured assau...

All Jane Austen novels have a common storyline: an attractive and virtuous young woman surmounts dif...

Before he turned again the to the car his eye was caught by a small clump of unknown flowers. The pa...

It was reasonable to struggle, to suffer, perhaps even to die, for a more just, a more compassionate...

If our sex life were determined by our first youthful experiments, most of the world would be doomed...

I don’t think He bargains.”“Oh yes He does. I may not be religious but I know my Bible. My mother sa...

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

I am fifty years old and I have never known what it is to love. I can write those words, know them t...

Charm is often despised but I can never see why. No one has it who isn't capable of genuinely liking...

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

The world of the terminally ill is the world of neither the living nor the dead.

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

I don't want anyone to look to me, not for protection, not for happiness, not for love, not for anyt...

We all die alone. We shall endure death as once we endured birth. You can’t share either experience.

You desire the end but close your eyes to the means. You want the garden to be beautiful, provided t...

Unnatural death always provoked a peculiar unease, an uncomfortable realization that there were stil...

I wonder if childhood is ever really happy. Just as well, perhaps. To be blissfully happy so young w...

Our parents' generation carried the past memorialized in paint, porcelain, and wood; we cast it off....

Every island to a child is a treasure island.

Not so much two ships passing in the night as two ships sailing together for a time but always bound...

What mattered at fifty-eight was what had mattered at eighteen: breeding and good bone structure.

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

Her aunt and uncle worked fifteen hours a day in their desperate attempt to keep the corner shop in ...

Benton had a strong interest in helping to ensure that Warren's home life wasn't greatly disturbed: ...

Snapping shut his mobile, Dalgliesh reflected that murder, a unique crime for which no reparation is...

The city which lay below was a charnel house built on multi-layered bones centuries older than those...

There is much that I remember but which is painful to dwell on. I see no need to write about these t...

When I am writing a novel, the setting, the characters, the action is clear in mind when I start -- ...