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
P. D. James quotes about
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.
together reason humans
Of all the things that human beings did together, the sexual act was the one with the most various of reasons.
creativity atmosphere coercion
Creativity doesn't flourish in an atmosphere of despotism, coercion and fear.
prejudice letters may
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.
country two decision
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.
loss grieving tragedy
The tragedy of loss is not that we grieve, but that we cease to grieve, and then perhaps the dead are dead at last.
government people moral
No government can act in advance of the moral will of the people.
youth immortality
Youth goes caparisoned in immortality.
rejection infanticide
Authors always take rejection badly. They equate it with infanticide.
war men may
Wars may be fought by decent men, but they're not won by them.
nothing-but-the-truth oath swear
you'd like the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That must be the most futile oath anyone ever swears.
morning believe political
I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism . . . The only way to react is to get up in the morning and start the day by saying four or five vastly politically incorrect things before breakfast!
letters spontaneous individual
No literary form is more revealing, more spontaneous or more individual than a letter.
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?