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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.

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
Goes
Transitoriness
Middle
Shadowed
Age
Egregious
Death
Risks
Reality
Immortality
Take
Awareness
Life
Youth
Risk

More quotes by P. D. James

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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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Man is diminished if he lives without knowledge of his past without hope of a future he becomes a beast.
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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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Feel, he told himself, feel, feel, feel. Even if what you feel is pain, only let yourself feel.
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No literary form is more revealing, more spontaneous or more individual than a letter.
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What a child doesn't receive he can seldom later give.
P. D. James
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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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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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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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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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Work did bestow dignity, status, meaning. Wasn't that why people dreaded unemployment, why some men found retirement so traumatic?
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There comes a time when every scientist, even God, has to write off an experiment.
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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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Suicide is the most private and mysterious of acts, inexplicable because the chief actor is never there to explain it.
P. D. James
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Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious.
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.
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I don't see why escapist literature shouldn't also be a work of art.
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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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we can forgive anything as long as it isn't done to us.
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