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

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Charm is often despised but I can never see why. No one has it who isn't capable of genuinely liking others, at least at the actual moment of meeting and speaking. Charm is always genuine it may be superficial but it isn't false.
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When I heard, Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, I thought, Did he fall or was he pushed?
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Murder is the unique crime, the only one for which we can never make reparation to the victim.
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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.
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Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft. The greater your vocabulary the more ­effective your writing. We who write in English are fortunate to have the richest and most versatile language in the world. Respect it.
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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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All these problems [deciding cases] are easier for people who believe in God. Those of us who don't or can't have to do the best we can. That's what the law is, the best we can do. Human justice is imperfect, but it's the only justice we have.
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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.
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If from infancy you treat children as gods, they are liable in adulthood to act as devils.
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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.
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What a child doesn't receive he can seldom later give.
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Wars may be fought by decent men, but they're not won by them.
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Work did bestow dignity, status, meaning. Wasn't that why people dreaded unemployment, why some men found retirement so traumatic?
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however long we have to live, there are never enough springs.
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Perhaps it's only when people are dead that we can safely show how much we cared about them. We know that it's too late then for them to do anything about it.
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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.
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Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft.
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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.
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Time didn't heal, but it anesthetized. The human mind could only feel so much.
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