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… — P. D. James Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
What was so terrible about grief was not grief itself, but that one got over it. — P. D. James Copy Share Image
Work did bestow dignity, status, meaning. Wasn't that why people dreaded unemployment, why some men found retirement so traumatic? — P. D. James Copy Share Image
If you are proposing to commit a sin it is as well to commit it with intelligence. Otherwise you are insulting God as well… — P. D. James Copy Share Image
What the detective story is about is not murder but the restoration of order. — P. D. James Copy Share Image
It's possible to fight intolerance, stupidity and fanaticism when they come separately. When you get all three together it's probably wiser to get out,… — P. D. James Copy Share Image
Death ... obliterates family resemblance as it does personality: there is no affinity between the living and the dead. — P. D. James Copy Share Image
If all power corrupts, then a doctor, who literally holds life and death in his hands, must be at particular risk. — P. D. James Copy Share Image
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… — P. D. James Copy Share Image
In youth we take egregious risks because death has no reality for us. Youth goes caparisoned in immortality. It is only in middle age… — P. D. James Copy Share Image
It is always easy to question the judgement of others in matters of which we may be imperfectly informed. — P. D. James Copy Share Image
