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Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other ­people. Nothing that happens to a writer – however happy, however tragic – is ever wasted.

P. D. James

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P. D. James
Age: 94 †
Born: 1920
Born: August 3
Died: 2014
Died: November 27
Member Of The House Of Lords
Novelist
Politician
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Phyllis Dorothy James
Phyllis Dorothy James
Baroness James of Holland Park
Phyllis James
Baroness Phyllis Dorothy James
Happy
Wasted
Happens
Tragic
Ever
Particularly
Nothing
Experiences
Mind
However
People
Writer
Study
Open

More quotes by P. D. James

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Human kindness is like a defective tap, the first gush may be impressive but the stream soon dries up.
P. D. James
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There comes a time when every scientist, even God, has to write off an experiment.
P. D. James
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The secret of contentment is never to allow yourself to want anything which reason tells you you haven't a chance of getting.
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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
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People were excited by violence. What, after all, was the sexual act but a voluntarily endured assault, a momentary death?
P. D. James
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Of all the things that human beings did together, the sexual act was the one with the most various of reasons.
P. D. James
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Creativity doesn't flourish in an atmosphere of despotism, coercion and fear.
P. D. James
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Man is diminished if he lives without knowledge of his past without hope of a future he becomes a beast.
P. D. James
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Wars may be fought by decent men, but they're not won by them.
P. D. James
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You never forget the people who were kind to you in childhood, do you, sir?
P. D. James
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Unnatural death always provoked a peculiar unease, an uncomfortable realization that there were still some things that might not be susceptible to bureaucratic control.
P. D. James
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Suicide is the most private and mysterious of acts, inexplicable because the chief actor is never there to explain it.
P. D. James
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When I heard, Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, I thought, Did he fall or was he pushed?
P. D. James
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I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism.
P. D. James
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Authors always take rejection badly. They equate it with infanticide.
P. D. James
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Time didn't heal, but it anesthetized. The human mind could only feel so much.
P. D. James
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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
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No literary form is more revealing, more spontaneous or more individual than a letter.
P. D. James
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Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft.
P. D. James
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First-class travel, provided one hasn't to pay for it oneself, is the most insidiously addictive of life's luxuries.
P. D. James