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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.

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
Aren
Nowadays
Mystery
Sorts
Especially
Secrets
Coming
Motive
Secret
Sexual
Credible
Today
Sell
Preventing
People
Sells
Motives
Guilty
Mysteries

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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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The tragedy of loss is not that we grieve, but that we cease to grieve, and then perhaps the dead are dead at last.
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Youth goes caparisoned in immortality.
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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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What the detective story is about is not murder but the restoration of order.
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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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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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Creativity doesn't flourish in an atmosphere of despotism, coercion and fear.
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Suicide is the most private and mysterious of acts, inexplicable because the chief actor is never there to explain it.
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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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It is difficult to be generous-minded to those we have greatly harmed.
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Great literature cannot grow from a neglected or impoverished soil. Only if we actually tend or care will it transpire that every hundred years or so we might get a Middlemarch.
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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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When I heard, Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, I thought, Did he fall or was he pushed?
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A nation that can't remember its dead will soon cease to be worth dying for.
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