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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
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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
Might
Unnatural
Always
Peculiar
Things
Realization
Uncomfortable
Control
Unease
Death
Bureaucratic
Stills
Provoked
Still
Susceptible
More quotes by P. D. James
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
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
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.
P. D. James
the most successful marriages were always based on both partners feeling that they had done rather well for themselves.
P. D. James
We English are good at forgiving our enemies it releases us from the obligation of liking our friends.
P. D. James
A nation that can't remember its dead will soon cease to be worth dying for.
P. D. James
People were excited by violence. What, after all, was the sexual act but a voluntarily endured assault, a momentary death?
P. D. James
When I heard, Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, I thought, Did he fall or was he pushed?
P. D. James
It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.
P. D. James
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
Charm is always genuine it may be superficial but it isn't false.
P. D. James
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
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
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.
P. D. James
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.
P. D. James
Youth goes caparisoned in immortality.
P. D. James
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
Suicide is the most private and mysterious of acts, inexplicable because the chief actor is never there to explain it.
P. D. James
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
Of all the things that human beings did together, the sexual act was the one with the most various of reasons.
P. D. James
