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No literary form is more revealing, more spontaneous or more individual than a letter.

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
Literary
Letters
Individual
Form
Revealing
Spontaneous
Letter

More quotes by P. D. James

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Of all the things that human beings did together, the sexual act was the one with the most various of reasons.
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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You never forget the people who were kind to you in childhood, do you, sir?
P. D. James
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Every island to a child is a treasure island.
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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Feel, he told himself, feel, feel, feel. Even if what you feel is pain, only let yourself feel.
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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Youth goes caparisoned in immortality.
P. D. James
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What a child doesn't receive he can seldom later give.
P. D. James
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Authors always take rejection badly. They equate it with infanticide.
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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Wars may be fought by decent men, but they're not won by them.
P. D. James
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The modern holy trinity is money, sex and celebrity.
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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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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[My father and his friends] believed in equality for women without troubling to acquire the basic domestic skills which would have made that equality possible.
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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Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft.
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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What the detective story is about is not murder but the restoration of order.
P. D. James