P. D. James Quotes

It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.

Violent death, like most disasters, afforded its satisfactions to those who were neither victim nor suspect.

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

To enjoy the sole attention of one agreeable man and no attention at all from anyone else was all she ever hoped from a party.

You're going to have to, Xan. You may have to kill her, too.

How fragile was that elegant, complicated bridge of order and reason which the law had constructed down the centuries over the abyss of social and psychological chaos.

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.

We can experience nothing but the present moment, live in no other second of time, and to understand this is as close as we can get to eternal life.

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

I don't think God bargains.

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

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.

One of my earliest loves was the Book of Common Prayer. I was seduced by it, by its beautiful words and the sense of history.

If there's any sort of existence after death we shall all know it soon enough. If there isn't, we shan't exist to complain that we've been cheated.

Every novelist write what he or she needs to write, a subconscious compulsion to express and explain his unique view of reality.