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The greatest mystery of all is the human heart.

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
Humans
Heart
Mystery
Greatest

More quotes by P. D. James

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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.
P. D. James
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gossip ... was like any other commodity in the marketplace. You received it only if you had something of value to give.
P. D. James
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We English are good at forgiving our enemies it releases us from the obligation of liking our friends.
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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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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Work did bestow dignity, status, meaning. Wasn't that why people dreaded unemployment, why some men found retirement so traumatic?
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
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It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.
P. D. James
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Authors always take rejection badly. They equate it with infanticide.
P. D. James
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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.
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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we can forgive anything as long as it isn't done to us.
P. D. James
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Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other ­people. Nothing that happens to a writer – however happy, however tragic – is ever wasted.
P. D. James
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Every island to a child is a treasure island.
P. D. James
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You never forget the people who were kind to you in childhood, do you, sir?
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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however long we have to live, there are never enough springs.
P. D. James
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A nation that can't remember its dead will soon cease to be worth dying for.
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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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