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

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In youth we take egregious risks because death has no reality for us. Youth goes caparisoned in immortality. It is only in middle age that we are shadowed by the awareness of the transitoriness of life.
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Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft.
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The greatest mystery of all is the human heart.
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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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Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious.
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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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Human kindness is like a defective tap, the first gush may be impressive but the stream soon dries up.
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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.
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A nation that can't remember its dead will soon cease to be worth dying for.
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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.
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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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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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It is difficult to be generous-minded to those we have greatly harmed.
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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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If from infancy you treat children as gods, they are liable in adulthood to act as devils.
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No literary form is more revealing, more spontaneous or more individual than a letter.
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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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Creativity doesn't flourish in an atmosphere of despotism, coercion and fear.
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Charm is always genuine it may be superficial but it isn't false.
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