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P. D. James

72 quotes

“I always had a sceptical and slightly morbid caste of mind, so my first response to Humpty Dumpty was "Did he fall or was he pushed?" I was drawn to the macabre, and for some reason I was very interested, from earliest childhood, in death. I seemed to think about it a great deal. It may have been something to do with the war, which overshadowed my childhood. My father talked about it a lot. It was like a great universal pain.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) first seen 1993 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Victoria McKee, quoted in Victoria McKee, 'P.D. James', The Times Magazine (22 May 1993), p. 43
“One of my earliest loves was the Book of Common Prayer. I was seduced by it, by its beautiful words and the sense of history.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) first seen 1993 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Victoria McKee, quoted in Victoria McKee, 'P.D. James', The Times Magazine (22 May 1993), p. 43
“My English teacher, Miss Daisy Dalgliesh, really made Shakespeare live for me, although I didn't see it on stage until I was an adult. I named my detective after her. It was years later that I found out her father was called Adam Dalgliesh.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) first seen 1993 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Victoria McKee, quoted in Victoria McKee, 'P.D. James', The Times Magazine (22 May 1993), p. 43
“Unless the young can use language effectively, both to express their own minds and to understand the minds of others, it is difficult to see how we can have a vigorous democracy in which ideas and policies can be intelligently presented, considered and criticised or achieve that understanding with other countries which nations enjoy through access to each other's language and literature.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) first seen 1993 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'English must be saved', The Times (14 June 1993), p. 14
“Because English is spoken and written in so many forms for a variety of purposes throughout the world it is surely important that English in its highest form should be taught, spoken and valued in this country. Yet few would deny that standards of written and spoken English are in decline among all sections of the community and that we are in real danger of becoming an illiterate society.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) first seen 1993 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'English must be saved', The Times (14 June 1993), p. 14
“We also had the inestimable advantage of beginning each school day with an act of worship which included a reading from the King James Bible which, with the Book of Common Prayer, has had more influence on our language, literature, history and culture than any other book, but which today a majority of our children will never encounter.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) first seen 1993 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'English must be saved', The Times (14 June 1993), p. 14
“I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) first seen 1995 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Paris Review (1995), as cited in The Oxford Treasury of Sayings and Quotations (2011), ed. Susan Ratcliffe, Oxford University Press, p. 250 :
“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 (1920–2014) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Jake Kerridge, The Telegraph, 26 Sep 2009 .
“Cordelia was fumbling in her shoulder bag for her own key. As usual the object most required had fallen to the bottom of the bag.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) first seen 1974 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ch.1 - at p.11 [Page numbers per the Sphere Books Limited 1974 paperback edition (second 1981 reprint).]
“Invited by Major Markland to sit, Cordelia perched on the edge of the sofa, half expecting the smooth cushion to let out a rude noise as it subsided beneath her. She found it, however, unexpectedly hard.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was only in fiction that the people one wanted to interview were sitting ready at home or in their office, with time, energy and interest to spare. In real life they were about their own business and one waited on their convenience.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It isn't what you suspect, it's what you can prove that counts.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If there's any sort of existence after death we shall all know it soon enough. If there isn't, we shan't exist to complain that we've been cheated.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To enjoy the sole attention of one agreeable man and no attention at all from anyone else was all she ever hoped from a party.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My mother used to say, 'Don't marry for money, but marry where money is! ' There's no harm in looking for money as long as there's kindness as well.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But what is the use of making the world more beautiful if the people who live in it can't love one another?”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There were moments, usually on a sunny Easter morning, when she wished that she could with sincerity call herself a Christian; but for the rest of the year she knew herself to be what she was - incurably agnostic but prone to unpredictable relapses into faith.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Are you sorry about Isabelle leaving?" "I am rather. Beauty is intellectually confusing; it sabotages common sense. I could never quite accept that Isabelle was what she is: a generous, indolent, over-affectionate and stupid young woman. I thought that any woman as beautiful as she must have an instinct about life, access to some secret wisdom which is beyond cleverness. Every time she opened that delicious mouth I was expecting her to illumine life. I think I could have spent all my life just looking at her and waiting for the oracle. And all she could talk about was clothes.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She remembered what Bernie had told her: "In this country, if people won't talk, there's nothing you can do to make them, more's the pity. Luckily for the police most people just can't keep their mouths shut. The intelligent ones are the worst. They just have to show how clever they are, and once you've got them discussing the case, even discussing it generally, then you've got them.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hunch is a good servant but a poor master.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I can understand the poor and stupid voting for Marxism or one of its fashionable variants. If you've no hope of being other than a slave, you may as well opt for the most efficient form of slavery.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If from infancy you treat children as gods they are liable in adulthood to act as devils.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I knew that what I had felt was envy or regret, not for something lost but for something never achieved.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Use some reverence. Remember what he was only a minute ago. You wouldn't have dared laid a hand on him.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We can experience nothing but the present moment, live in no other second of time, and to understand this is as close as we can get to eternal life.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Darling, you can't promise that...but I like to hear you say it.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I didn't love him, but I liked him being in love with me.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When my turn comes I propose to take my lethal capsule comfortably in bed at home and preferably on my own.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whatever else I am now, I'm never bored.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'm not a tyrant, but I can't afford to be merciful. Whatever it is necessary to do, I will do it.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Perhaps His experiment went spectacularly wrong, sir. Perhaps He's just baffled. Seeing the mess, not knowing how to put it right. Perhaps not wanting to put it right. Perhaps He only had enough power left for one final intervention. So He made it. Whoever He is, whatever He is, I hope he burns in His own Hell.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We all die alone. We shall endure death as once we enjoyed birth. You can't share either experience.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Man Penal settlement. Do you know whats happening there? The murders, the starvation, the complete breakdown of law and order.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We do. The question is, how do you?”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don't want to kill you.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You're going to have to, Xan. You may have to kill her, too.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don't think God bargains.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Oh yes he does. I may not be religious but I know my Bible. My mother saw to that. He bargains all right. But He's supposed to be just. If he wants belief He'd better provide some evidence.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That He exists?”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That he cares.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How odd, he thought, that one could get used to beauty [i.e. in one's wife]. Once he had thought that any price would be worth paying if he could possess it, know it to be exclusively his, feed on it, be comforted, exalted, even sanctified by it. But you couldn't possess beauty any more than you could possess another human being.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) first seen 1998 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ch.8 - at p.99 [Page numbers per the Penguin Books 1998 paperback edition.]
“They had been married for thirty-two years. Did he really know so little about her?”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Was there a place for him in this modern world, where systems mattered more than people?”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“His face was a mask betraying nothing.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No one was about, yet he seemed to sense the presence of watching eyes behind blank windows.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The street and the houses had a perfection which was almost intimidating. No weed, thought Kate, would surely dare to push its unsanctified tendrils through these carefully tended small lawns and flower beds.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mrs Buckley was revealed as a slight, nervous-looking woman with a small precisely formed mouth between bulging cheeks, which gave her the appearance of a hamster.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He looked more like a professional rugger player than a lawyer, though not when he wore his wig. Then the face became an impressive mask of judicial gravitas. But, thought Langton, wigs metamorphose us all; perhaps that's why we're so unwilling to get rid of them.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source