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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.

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
Escape
Sentences
Serve
Prison
Childhood
Time
Appeal
Sentence
Appeals

More quotes by P. D. James

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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.
P. D. James
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Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious.
P. D. James
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There comes a time when every scientist, even God, has to write off an experiment.
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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A nation that can't remember its dead will soon cease to be worth dying for.
P. D. James
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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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The secret of contentment is never to allow yourself to want anything which reason tells you you haven't a chance of getting.
P. D. James
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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?
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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First-class travel, provided one hasn't to pay for it oneself, is the most insidiously addictive of life's luxuries.
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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Creativity doesn't flourish in an atmosphere of despotism, coercion and fear.
P. D. James
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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.
P. D. James
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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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A regime which combines perpetual surveillance with total indulgence is hardly conducive to healthy development.
P. D. James
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Wars may be fought by decent men, but they're not won by them.
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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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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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.
P. D. James
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What a child doesn't receive he can seldom later give.
P. D. James