P. D. James

Wars may be fought by decent men, but they're not won by them.

— P. D. James

the unforgivable was usually the most easily forgiven.

— P. D. James

I don't see why escapist literature shouldn't also be a work of art.

— P. D. James

God gives every bird his worm, but He does not throw it into the nest.

— P. D. James

Most of my life I have needed more time to be on my own.

— P. D. James

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

— P. D. James

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

— P. D. James

Love, always love. Perhaps that’s what we’re all looking for.

— P. D. James

When I heard, Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, I thought, Did he fall or was he pushed?

— 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

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

You never forget the people who were kind to you in childhood, do you, sir?

— 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

I don't think writers choose the genre, the genre chooses us. I wrote out of the wish to create order out of…

— 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

the most successful marriages were always based on both partners feeling that they had done rather well for themselves.

— P. D. James

Any visitor to an historic country town or city quickly becomes aware in his or her peregrinations that the most attractive houses…

— P. D. James

There is no point in regretting any part of the past. The past can't now be altered, the future has yet to…

— P. D. James

[My father and his friends] believed in equality for women without troubling to acquire the basic domestic skills which would have made…

— P. D. James

I find it extraordinary that a straightforward if inelegant device for ensuring the survival of the species should involve human beings in…

— 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…

— 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

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

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

to look back on one's life is to experience the capriciousness of memory. ... the past is not static. It can be…

— P. D. James

There are two options for any society: total prohibition as in a totalitarian state, or total license. Both avoid the ardours of…

— 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

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

— 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 letter is paradoxically the most revealing and the most deceptive of confessional revelations. We all have our inconsistencies, prejudices, irrationalities which,…

— P. D. James

we can forgive anything as long as it isn't done to us.

— P. D. James

however long we have to live, there are never enough springs.

— P. D. James

The greatest mystery of all is the human heart,

— P. D. James

What a child doesn't receive he can seldom later give.

— P. D. James

Old age makes caricatures of us all.

— P. D. James

Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft.

— P. D. James

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

— P. D. James

Youth goes caparisoned in immortality.

— P. D. James

The modern holy trinity is money, sex and celebrity.

— P. D. James

“Violent death erase[s] more than the semblance of life.”

— P. D. James