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If this were fiction, could even the most brilliant novelist contrive to make credible so short a period in which pride had been subdued and prejudice overcome?

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
Brilliant
Contrive
Period
Subdued
Periods
Credible
Pride
Novelist
Short
Novelists
Fiction
Overcome
Even
Prejudice
Make
Overcoming

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[My father and his friends] believed in equality for women without troubling to acquire the basic domestic skills which would have made that equality possible.
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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.
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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.
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We English are good at forgiving our enemies it releases us from the obligation of liking our friends.
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Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft.
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You never forget the people who were kind to you in childhood, do you, sir?
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Human kindness is like a defective tap, the first gush may be impressive but the stream soon dries up.
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Generosity is a virtue for individuals, not governments. When governments are generous it is with other people’s money, other people’s safety, other people’s future.
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Any visitor to an historic country town or city quickly becomes aware in his or her peregrinations that the most attractive houses in the centre are invariably the offices of lawyers.
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It is difficult to be generous-minded to those we have greatly harmed.
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Creativity doesn't flourish in an atmosphere of despotism, coercion and fear.
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however long we have to live, there are never enough springs.
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What the detective story is about is not murder but the restoration of order.
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People were excited by violence. What, after all, was the sexual act but a voluntarily endured assault, a momentary death?
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I don't think writers choose the genre, the genre chooses us. I wrote out of the wish to create order out of disorder, the liking of a pattern.
P. D. James
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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.
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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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Murder is the unique crime, the only one for which we can never make reparation to the victim.
P. D. James
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Every island to a child is a treasure island.
P. D. James
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Childhood is the one prison from which there's no escape, the one sentence from which there's no appeal. We all serve our time.
P. D. James