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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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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
Fought
Wars
Decent
War
May
Men

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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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It was reasonable to struggle, to suffer, perhaps even to die, for a more just, a more compassionate society, but not in a world with no future where, all to soon, the very words justice, compassion, society, struggle, evil, would be unheard echoes on an empty air.
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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.
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Suicide is the most private and mysterious of acts, inexplicable because the chief actor is never there to explain it.
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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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Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious.
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Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft.
P. D. James
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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.
P. D. James
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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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When I heard, Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, I thought, Did he fall or was he pushed?
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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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we can forgive anything as long as it isn't done to us.
P. D. James
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The modern holy trinity is money, sex and celebrity.
P. D. James
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The greatest mystery of all is the human heart.
P. D. James