D. James
D. James
love-you tragedy half
He didn't want her; he wanted me. Well, you know how it is." Dalgliesh did know. This, after all, was the commonest, the most banal of personal tragedies. You loved someone. They didn't love you. Worse still, in defiance of their own best interests and to the destruction of your peace, they loved another. What would half the world's poets and novelists do without this universal tragicomedy?
want looks protection
I don't want anyone to look to me, not for protection, not for happiness, not for love, not for anything.
race mind crumbling
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.
realization might peculiar
Unnatural death always provoked a peculiar unease, an uncomfortable realization that there were still some things that might not be susceptible to bureaucratic control.
together reason humans
Of all the things that human beings did together, the sexual act was the one with the most various of reasons.
retirement people unemployment
Work did bestow dignity, status, meaning. Wasn't that why people dreaded unemployment, why some men found retirement so traumatic?
age caricatures old-age
Old age makes caricatures of us all.
writing order appreciate
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.
unique murder crime
Murder is the unique crime, the only one for which we can never make reparation to the victim.
successful feelings done
the most successful marriages were always based on both partners feeling that they had done rather well for themselves.
spring long enough
however long we have to live, there are never enough springs.
expectations essentials may
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.
youth immortality
Youth goes caparisoned in immortality.
people childhood kind
You never forget the people who were kind to you in childhood, do you, sir?