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P. D. James Biography

Phyllis Dorothy James, Baroness James of Holland Park, OBE, FRSA, FRSL (3 August 1920 – 27 November 2014), known professionally as P. D. James, was an English crime writer. She rose to fame for her series of detective novels starring police commander and poet Adam Dalgliesh.

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P. D. James Quotes

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

Government, Moral, People

If from infancy you treat children as gods, they are liable in adulthood to act as devils.

Act, Adulthood, Children, Inspirational, Kids

He didn't want her; he wanted me. Well, you know how it is. " Dalgliesh did know. This, after all, was the commonest, the most banal of personal tragedies. You loved someone. They didn't love you. Worse still, in defiance of their own best interests and to the destruction of your peace, they loved another. What would half the world's poets and novelists do without this universal tragicomedy?

Dalgliesh, Love You, Poets, Tragedy, Universal, Want

In 1930s mysteries, all sorts of motives were credible which aren't credible today, especially motives of preventing guilty sexual secrets from coming out. Nowadays, people sell their guilty sexual secrets.

Coming, Mysteries, People, Secret, Sorts, Today

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.

Race, Mind, Crumbling, Defences, Posterity, Against

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 only if they persevere.

Life, Persevere, Sex, World, Would Be, Youthful

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.

Future, Generosity, Government, Governments, People, Safety

Childhood is the one prison from which there's no escape, the one sentence from which there's no appeal. We all serve our time.

Appeal, Appeals, Childhood, Prison

The world is full of people who have lost faith: politicians who have lost faith in politics, social workers who have lost faith in social work, schoolteachers who have lost faith in teaching and, for all I know, policemen who have lost faith in policing and poets who have lost faith in poetry. It's a condition of faith that it gets lost from time to time, or at least mislaid.

Faith, Gets, People, Teaching, Workers, World

I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism.

Believe, Correctness, Fascism, Political, Sends, War

We live in a society which salves its conscience more by helping the interestingly unfortunate than the dull deserving.

Charity, Conscience, Dull, Helping, Live

Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious.

Bad Writing, Contagious, Discrimination, Read, Widely, Writing

Old age makes caricatures of us all.

Age, Caricatures, Old, Old Age

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

Affinity, Dead, Death, Doe, Personality

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

Fought, May, Men, War, Wars, Won

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

Fall, Pushed, Sat, Thought, Wall

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

Addictive, Class, Luxury, Pay, Travel

We who write in English are fortunate to have the richest and most versatile language in the world. Respect it.

English, Language, Richest, World, Writing

The modern holy trinity is money, sex and celebrity.

Modern, Money, Religion, Sex, Trinity

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

Belief, Contrary, Fiction, Moral

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