P. D. James
P. D. James
Phyllis Dorothy James, Baroness James of Holland Park, OBE, FRSA, FRSL, known as P. D. James, was an English crime writer. She rose to fame for her series of detective novels starring police commander and poet Adam Dalgliesh...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth3 August 1920
writing scientist there-comes-a-time
There comes a time when every scientist, even God, has to write off an experiment.
cat animal merciful
We are often more merciful to our animals [cats] than we are to each other.
secret contentment want
The secret of contentment is never to allow yourself to want anything which reason tells you you haven't a chance of getting.
judgement may matter
It is always easy to question the judgement of others in matters of which we may be imperfectly informed.
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.
men past beast
Man is diminished if he lives without knowledge of his past; without hope of a future he becomes a beast.
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?
believe politician humbug
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.
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.