P. D. James Quotes

132 Sourced Quotes

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
It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.

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
I thought of inviting you to my other club but you know how it is. Lunching there is a useful way of reminding people that you're still alive, but the members will come up and congratulate you on the fact.

P. D. James
We English are good at forgiving our enemies; it releases us from the obligation of liking our friends.

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
Books of quotations... afford me one of the most undemanding but satisfying forms of reading pleasure.

P. D. James
Work did bestow dignity, status, meaning. Wasn't that why people dreaded unemployment, why some men found retirement so traumatic?

P. D. James
Ambition, if it were to be savored, let alone achieved, had to be rooted in possibility.

P. D. James
Children live in occupied territory. The brave and the foolhardy openly rebel against authority, whether harsh or benign. But most tread warily, outwardly accommodating themselves to alien mores and edicts while living in secret their iconoclastic and subversive lives.

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
Human kindness is like a defective tap, the first gush may be impressive but the stream soon dries up.

P. D. James
&You're going to have to, Xan. You may have to kill her, too.

P. D. James
Perfect love may cast our fear, but fear is remarkably potent in casting out love.

P. D. James
I learned early and at that kitchen table that there are ways of avoiding, without guilt, the commitments of love.

P. D. James
Early this morning, 1 January 2021, three minutes after midnight, the last human being to be born on earth was killed in a pub brawl in a suburb of Buenos Aires, aged twenty-five years, two months and twelve days.

P. D. James
It is surely unreasonable to credit that only one small star in the immensity of the universe is capable of developing and supporting intelligent life. But we shall not get to them and they will not come to us.

P. D. James
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
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
Man is diminished if he lives without knowledge of his past; without hope of a future he becomes a beast.

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
Not so much two ships passing in the night as two ships sailing together for a time but always bound for different ports.

P. D. James
The world of the terminally ill is the world of neither the living nor the dead. I have watched others since I watched my father, and always with a sense of their strangeness. They sit and speak, and are spoken to, and listen, and even smile, but in spirit they have already moved away from us and there is no way we can enter their shadowy no-man's-land.

P. D. James
Once you have discovered what is happening, you can't pretend not to know, you can't abdicate responsibility. Knowledge always brings responsibility.

P. D. James
Gabriel has a personality like a hexagon. People need touch only one side for an illusion of closeness.

P. D. James
We all die alone. We shall endure death as once we enjoyed birth. You can't share either experience.

P. D. James
The intention of any novelist must surely be to make that straight avenue to the human heart.

P. D. James
We live in a society which salves its conscience more by helping the interestingly unfortunate than the dull deserving.

P. D. James
A regime which combines perpetual surveillance with total indulgence is hardly conducive to healthy development.

P. D. James
I knew the facts of death before I knew the facts of life. There never was a time when I didn't see the skull beneath the skin.

P. D. James