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We English are good at forgiving our enemies it releases us from the obligation of liking our friends.

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
English
Releases
Enemy
Liking
Friends
Sarcasm
War
Sarcastic
Good
Enemies
Release
Obligation
Forgiving

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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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Wars may be fought by decent men, but they're not won by them.
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Man is diminished if he lives without knowledge of his past without hope of a future he becomes a beast.
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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!
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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.
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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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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?
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You never forget the people who were kind to you in childhood, do you, sir?
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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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Charm is always genuine it may be superficial but it isn't false.
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In 1930s mysteries, all sorts of motives were credible which aren't credible today, especially motives of preventing guilty sexual secrets from coming out. Nowadays, people sell their guilty sexual secrets.
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Every island to a child is a treasure island.
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the most successful marriages were always based on both partners feeling that they had done rather well for themselves.
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we can forgive anything as long as it isn't done to us.
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however long we have to live, there are never enough springs.
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Authors always take rejection badly. They equate it with infanticide.
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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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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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It shows considerable wisdom to know what you want in life and then to direct all your energies towards getting it.
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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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