P. D. James - The Children of Men (1992)

35 Sourced Quotes

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

P. D. James
Darling, you can't promise that... but I like to hear you say it.

P. D. James
If our sex life were determined by our first youthful experiments, most of the world would be doomed to celibacy. In no area of human experience are human beings more convinced that something better can be had if only they persevere.

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

P. D. James
The world is changed not by the self-regarding, but by men and women prepared to make fools of themselves.

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

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
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
I still occasionally need to struggle but I now fear it less. The weapons I fight it with are also my consolations: books, music, food, wine, nature.

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
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
When my turn comes I propose to take my lethal capsule comfortably in bed at home and preferably on my own.

P. D. James
The weekend break had begun with the usual resentment and had continued with half-repressed ill humour. It was, of course, his fault. He had been more ready to hurt his wife's feelings and deprive his daughter than inconvenience a pub bar full of strangers. He wished there could be one memory of his dead child which wasn't tainted with guilt and regret.

P. D. James
Feel, he told himself, feel, feel, feel. Even if what you feel is pain, only let yourself feel.

P. D. James
History, which interprets the past to understand the present and confront the future is the least rewarding discipline for a dying species.

P. D. James
Christmas, that annual celebration of parental guilt and juvenile greed.

P. D. James
I don't want anyone to look to me, not for protection, not for happiness, not for love, not for anything.

P. D. James
It is difficult to be generous-minded to those we have greatly harmed.

P. D. James
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
I didn't love him, but I liked him being in love with me.

P. D. James
Rosie is the latest and most successful of the television performers who sell salvation and do very well out of a commodity which is always in demand and which costs them nothing to supply.

P. D. James
Use some reverence. Remember what he was only a minute ago. You wouldn't have dared laid a hand on him.

P. D. James
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
I knew that what I had felt was envy or regret, not for something lost but for something never achieved.

P. D. James
No government can act in advance of the moral will of the people.

P. D. James
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.

P. D. James
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