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Charm is always genuine it may be superficial but it isn't false.

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
Genuine
May
Always
Superficial
Charm
False

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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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Murder is the unique crime, the only one for which we can never make reparation to the victim.
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But what do you believe? I don't just mean religion. What are you sure of? That once I was not and that now I am. That one day I shall no longer be.
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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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Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft.
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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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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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A politician is required to listen to humbug, talk humbug, condone humbug. The most we can hope for is that we don't actually believe it.
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The greatest mystery of all is the human heart.
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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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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.
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Authors always take rejection badly. They equate it with infanticide.
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Generosity is a virtue for individuals, not governments. When governments are generous it is with other people’s money, other people’s safety, other people’s future.
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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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Unnatural death always provoked a peculiar unease, an uncomfortable realization that there were still some things that might not be susceptible to bureaucratic control.
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If you are proposing to commit a sin it is as well to commit it with intelligence. Otherwise you are insulting God as well as defying Him, don't you think?
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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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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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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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