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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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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
Listen
Talk
Actually
Hope
Believe
Condone
Humbug
Required
Politician

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People were excited by violence. What, after all, was the sexual act but a voluntarily endured assault, a momentary death?
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It is difficult to be generous-minded to those we have greatly harmed.
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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.
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A man who lives with nature is used to violence and is companionable with death. There is more violence in an English hedgerow than in the meanest streets of a great city.
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There comes a time when every scientist, even God, has to write off an experiment.
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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.
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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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Youth goes caparisoned in immortality.
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What the detective story is about is not murder but the restoration of order.
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Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft.
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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.
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I don't see why escapist literature shouldn't also be a work of art.
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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.
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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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Time didn't heal, but it anesthetized. The human mind could only feel so much.
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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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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A regime which combines perpetual surveillance with total indulgence is hardly conducive to healthy development.
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The modern holy trinity is money, sex and celebrity.
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