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Human kindness is like a defective tap, the first gush may be impressive but the stream soon dries up.

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
Human
Defective
Humans
Impressive
First
Stream
Like
Streams
Kindness
Soon
May
Gush
Firsts
Dries

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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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The greatest mystery of all is the human heart.
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I don't see why escapist literature shouldn't also be a work of art.
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Creativity doesn't flourish in an atmosphere of despotism, coercion and fear.
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It is difficult to be generous-minded to those we have greatly harmed.
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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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I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism.
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Feel, he told himself, feel, feel, feel. Even if what you feel is pain, only let yourself feel.
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Charm is always genuine it may be superficial but it isn't false.
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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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however long we have to live, there are never enough springs.
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First-class travel, provided one hasn't to pay for it oneself, is the most insidiously addictive of life's luxuries.
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Wars may be fought by decent men, but they're not won by them.
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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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No literary form is more revealing, more spontaneous or more individual than a letter.
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A regime which combines perpetual surveillance with total indulgence is hardly conducive to healthy development.
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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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the most successful marriages were always based on both partners feeling that they had done rather well for themselves.
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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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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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