Quote

gossip ... was like any other commodity in the marketplace. You received it only if you had something of value to give.

P. D. James

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Value
Values
Give
Giving
Something
Marketplace
Like
Commodity
Gossip
Received

More quotes by P. D. James

Image
There comes a time when every scientist, even God, has to write off an experiment.
P. D. James
Image
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
Image
I don't see why escapist literature shouldn't also be a work of art.
P. D. James
Image
Authors always take rejection badly. They equate it with infanticide.
P. D. James
Image
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
Image
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?
P. D. James
Image
You never forget the people who were kind to you in childhood, do you, sir?
P. D. James
Image
The greatest mystery of all is the human heart.
P. D. James
Image
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
Image
Unnatural death always provoked a peculiar unease, an uncomfortable realization that there were still some things that might not be susceptible to bureaucratic control.
P. D. James
Image
Wars may be fought by decent men, but they're not won by them.
P. D. James
Image
It is difficult to be generous-minded to those we have greatly harmed.
P. D. James
Image
What a child doesn't receive he can seldom later give.
P. D. James
Image
Human kindness is like a defective tap, the first gush may be impressive but the stream soon dries up.
P. D. James
Image
I don't think writers choose the genre, the genre chooses us. I wrote out of the wish to create order out of disorder, the liking of a pattern.
P. D. James
Image
It shows considerable wisdom to know what you want in life and then to direct all your energies towards getting it.
P. D. James
Image
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
Image
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.
P. D. James
Image
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
Image
When I heard, Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, I thought, Did he fall or was he pushed?
P. D. James