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I don't see why escapist literature shouldn't also be a work of art.

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
Escapists
Escapist
Shouldn
Literature
Art
Also
Work

More quotes by P. D. James

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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.
P. D. James
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A regime which combines perpetual surveillance with total indulgence is hardly conducive to healthy development.
P. D. James
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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.
P. D. James
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What a child doesn't receive he can seldom later give.
P. D. James
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If from infancy you treat children as gods, they are liable in adulthood to act as devils.
P. D. James
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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.
P. D. James
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Every island to a child is a treasure island.
P. D. James
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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!
P. D. James
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the most successful marriages were always based on both partners feeling that they had done rather well for themselves.
P. D. James
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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.
P. D. James
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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.
P. D. James
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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.
P. D. James
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Man is diminished if he lives without knowledge of his past without hope of a future he becomes a beast.
P. D. James
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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.
P. D. James
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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.
P. D. James
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When I heard, Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, I thought, Did he fall or was he pushed?
P. D. James
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Authors always take rejection badly. They equate it with infanticide.
P. D. James
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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.
P. D. James
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It's possible to fight intolerance, stupidity and fanaticism when they come separately. When you get all three together it's probably wiser to get out, if only to preserve your sanity.
P. D. James
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Murder is the unique crime, the only one for which we can never make reparation to the victim.
P. D. James