Writer Quotes by P. D. James

8 Writer quotes by P. D. James

P. D. James’s comments on the writer’s craft arrive in eight terse lines, reflecting her precise, atmospheric approach to crime fiction. This brief set offers a quick, elegant glimpse into how she sees narrative as a puzzle of human motives.

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Publishers don't nurse you; they buy and sell you.

P. D. James

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read widely, not in order to copy someone else's style, but to learn to appreciate and recognize good writing and to see…

P. D. James

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

P. D. James

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Don't just plan to write - write. It is only by writing, not dreaming about it, that we develop our own style.

P. D. James

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“Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious." [ Ten rules for writing fiction , The Guardian, 20 February 2010 (with…

P. D. James

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Great literature cannot grow from a neglected or impoverished soil. Only if we actually tend or care will it transpire that every…

P. D. James

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Crime fiction confirms our belief, despite some evidence to the contrary, that we live in a rational, comprehensible, and moral universe.

P. D. James

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Authors always take rejection badly. They equate it with infanticide.

P. D. James

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More by P. D. James

What was so terrible about grief was not grief itself, but that one got over it.

P. D. James

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

P. D. James

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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

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What the detective story is about is not murder but the restoration of order.

P. D. James

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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

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Death ... obliterates family resemblance as it does personality: there is no affinity between the living and the dead.

P. D. James

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Publishers don't nurse you; they buy and sell you.

P. D. James

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

P. D. James

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If all power corrupts, then a doctor, who literally holds life and death in his hands, must be at particular risk.

P. D. James

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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

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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

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It is always easy to question the judgement of others in matters of which we may be imperfectly informed.

P. D. James

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First-class travel, provided one hasn't to pay for it oneself, is the most insidiously addictive of life's luxuries.

P. D. James

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Can we ever break free of the devices and desires of our own hearts? Might not our conscience be telling us what we most…

P. D. James

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Metaphysical speculation is about as pointless as a discussion on the meaning of one's lungs. They're for breathing.

P. D. James

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