P. D. James Quotes

If that was what she wanted to believe, why not let her?

He had disciplined his mind not to speculate; speculation in advance of the facts was always futile and could be dangerous.

Hunch is a good servant but a poor master.

Cordelia read the inscription carved deep on the headstone. "At rest": the commonest epitaph of a generation to whom rest must have seemed the ultimate luxury, the supreme benediction.
"It's a nice stone, isn't it?"
"Yes, it is. I was admiring the lettering."
"Cut deep, that is. It cost a mint of money but it was worth it. That'll last, you see. Half the lettering here won't, it's that shallow. It takes the pleasure out of a cemetery. I like to read the grave stones, like to know who people were and when they died and how long the women lived after they buried their men. It sets you wondering how they managed and whether they were lonely. There's no use in a stone if you can't read the lettering."

We cannot aspire to a "classless society", whatever that may mean, if some children are disadvantaged the moment they open their mouths, or if we arrogantly assume that only the young from certain backgrounds are capable of enjoying Shakespeare. Language and literature are not static. They change, develop, grow from the past and feed on the past. If we simply cease to care, if we debase, abuse, neglect our language and our literature, the time will come when reading will be the pursuit of a privileged élite and we shall no longer produce books worth reading or have a language and literature worth preserving.

The Man Penal settlement. Do you know whats happening there? The murders, the starvation, the complete breakdown of law and order.

How odd, he thought, that one could get used to beauty [i.e. in one's wife]. Once he had thought that any price would be worth paying if he could possess it, know it to be exclusively his, feed on it, be comforted, exalted, even sanctified by it. But you couldn't possess beauty any more than you could possess another human being.

They had been married for thirty-two years. Did he really know so little about her?

The street and the houses had a perfection which was almost intimidating. No weed, thought Kate, would surely dare to push its unsanctified tendrils through these carefully tended small lawns and flower beds.

My English teacher, Miss Daisy Dalgliesh, really made Shakespeare live for me, although I didn't see it on stage until I was an adult. I named my detective after her. It was years later that I found out her father was called Adam Dalgliesh.

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

Perhaps His experiment went spectacularly wrong, sir. Perhaps He's just baffled. Seeing the mess, not knowing how to put it right. Perhaps not wanting to put it right. Perhaps He only had enough power left for one final intervention. So He made it. Whoever He is, whatever He is, I hope he burns in His own Hell.

But of course she knew it. Chambers was a hotbed of gossip. People spoke in front of her. Gossip permeated the very air as if by a mysterious process of osmosis.

Old age can be very frightening, Commander. A lawyer whose mind is apt to go blank isn't just inefficient, he's dangerous.

Invited by Major Markland to sit, Cordelia perched on the edge of the sofa, half expecting the smooth cushion to let out a rude noise as it subsided beneath her. She found it, however, unexpectedly hard.