P. D. James

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

— 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

If you are proposing to commit a sin it is as well to commit it with intelligence. Otherwise you are insulting God…

— P. D. James

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

— P. D. James

It's possible to fight intolerance, stupidity and fanaticism when they come separately. When you get all three together it's probably wiser to…

— P. D. James

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

— P. D. James

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

— P. D. James

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

— P. D. James

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

— P. D. James

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

In youth we take egregious risks because death has no reality for us. Youth goes caparisoned in immortality. It is only in…

— P. D. James

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

— P. D. James

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

— P. D. James

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

— P. D. James

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

— 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…

— P. D. James

The tragedy of loss is not that we grieve, but that we cease to grieve, and then perhaps the dead are dead…

— 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

We are often more merciful to our animals than we are to each other.

— P. D. James

The world is full of people who have lost faith: politicians who have lost faith in politics, social workers who have lost…

— P. D. James

A nation that can't remember its dead will soon cease to be worth dying for.

— P. D. James

The great tragedy of Alzheimer's disease, and the reason why we dread it, is that it leaves us with no defence, not…

— P. D. James

The modern holy trinity is money, sex and celebrity.

— P. D. James

A picnic may well be a metaphor for life. The essentials for happiness are the right company, moderate if sanguine expectations and…

— P. D. James

you'd like the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That must be the most futile oath anyone ever swears.

— P. D. James