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P. D. James
72 quotes
“...We have a reputation for being difficult. Chambers is a collection of intelligent, highly independent, idiosyncratic, critical and overworked men and women whose profession is argument. It's a dull set which doesn't contain its share of eccentrics and personalities who could be described as difficult. ...”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Violent death, like most disasters, afforded its satisfactions to those who were neither victim nor suspect.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He had learned to be as wary of intuition as he was of superficial judgements, but it was hardly possible to be a long-serving detective officer and not know when a witness was lying. It wasn't always suspicious or even significant. Nearly everyone had something to hide. And it was optimistic to expect the whole truth at a first interview. A wise suspect answered questions and kept his counsel; only the naïve confused a police officer with a social worker.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It had been the good-looking young detective and the woman officer who had interviewed her, and she had sensed that they were quietly sympathetic. But that of course had been deliberate. They had set out to get her confidence and they had succeeded. She was amazed now how much she had confided to them.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But of course she knew it. Chambers was a hotbed of gossip. People spoke in front of her. Gossip permeated the very air as if by a mysterious process of osmosis.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A career which had begun so full of promise but which, like a stream with too feeble a spring, had spent itself with a sad inevitability among the sandy shallows of unrealised ambition.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How fragile was that elegant, complicated bridge of order and reason which the law had constructed down the centuries over the abyss of social and psychological chaos.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What condemned a man [in a police investigation] was the inability to keep his mouth shut.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Over the tea Enid said: "You know who controls this estate, don't you?" "Yes, the children." "The kids, the bloody kids. Complain to the police or the council and you get a brick through your window. Tell 'em off and like as not you get an earful of foul language and burning rags through the letter-box next day. And if they catch the little bastards and take them to youth court, what happens? Bloody nothing. They come home laughing. They're in gangs now by the time they're eight." Of course they are, thought Kate. How else can they survive?”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was glad to give up teaching, at least in London, glad to be rid of noise and violence and staff-room politics, and the constant fight to keep order.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Old age can be very frightening, Commander. A lawyer whose mind is apt to go blank isn't just inefficient, he's dangerous.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He had disciplined his mind not to speculate; speculation in advance of the facts was always futile and could be dangerous.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She couldn't remember when her interest in him, in his mysteriousness, his silences, his power, had grown into fascination, but she knew the precise moment when fascination had sharpened into desire.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You need to decide what you're interested in.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If that was what she wanted to believe, why not let her?”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She came to know a different London and she saw it through different eyes. The city was all things to all men. It reflected and deepened mood; it did not create it. Here the miserable were more miserable, the lonely more bereft, while the prosperous and happy saw reflected in its river and glittering life the confirmation of their deserved success. In her week of seeking, unsuccessfully, for a flat in which she could bear, even temporarily, to live, Philippa felt increasingly depressed and rejected.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don't see why escapist literature should not also be a work of art.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The intention of any novelist must surely be to make that straight avenue to the human heart.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every novelist write what he or she needs to write, a subconscious compulsion to express and explain his unique view of reality.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) first seen 1999 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Time to be Earnest - a Fragment of Biography Faber & Faber, London 1999.
“Marriage is both the most public and the most secret of institutions, its miseries as irritatingly insistent as a hacking cough, its private malaise less easily diagnosed. And nothing is so destructive as unhappiness to social life. No one wants to sit in embarrassed silence while his host and hostess demonstrate their mutual incompatibility and dislike.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Publisher: Faber and Faber, 2017, p. 133
“We cannot aspire to a "classless society", whatever that may mean, if some children are disadvantaged the moment they open their mouths, or if we arrogantly assume that only the young from certain backgrounds are capable of enjoying Shakespeare. Language and literature are not static. They change, develop, grow from the past and feed on the past. If we simply cease to care, if we debase, abuse, neglect our language and our literature, the time will come when reading will be the pursuit of a privileged élite and we shall no longer produce books worth reading or have a language and literature worth preserving.”
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
“Cordelia read the inscription carved deep on the headstone. "At rest": the commonest epitaph of a generation to whom rest must have seemed the ultimate luxury, the supreme benediction. "It's a nice stone, isn't it?" "Yes, it is. I was admiring the lettering." "Cut deep, that is. It cost a mint of money but it was worth it. That'll last, you see. Half the lettering here won't, it's that shallow. It takes the pleasure out of a cemetery. I like to read the grave stones, like to know who people were and when they died and how long the women lived after they buried their men. It sets you wondering how they managed and whether they were lonely. There's no use in a stone if you can't read the lettering.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source