P. D. James Quotes

It had been the good-looking young detective and the woman officer who had interviewed her, and she had sensed that they were quietly sympathetic. But that of course had been deliberate. They had set out to get her confidence and they had succeeded. She was amazed now how much she had confided to them.

He had learned to be as wary of intuition as he was of superficial judgements, but it was hardly possible to be a long-serving detective officer and not know when a witness was lying. It wasn't always suspicious or even significant. Nearly everyone had something to hide. And it was optimistic to expect the whole truth at a first interview. A wise suspect answered questions and kept his counsel; only the naïve confused a police officer with a social worker.

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

...We have a reputation for being difficult. Chambers is a collection of intelligent, highly independent, idiosyncratic, critical and overworked men and women whose profession is argument. It's a dull set which doesn't contain its share of eccentrics and personalities who could be described as difficult. ...

He looked more like a professional rugger player than a lawyer, though not when he wore his wig. Then the face became an impressive mask of judicial gravitas. But, thought Langton, wigs metamorphose us all; perhaps that's why we're so unwilling to get rid of them.

Mrs Buckley was revealed as a slight, nervous-looking woman with a small precisely formed mouth between bulging cheeks, which gave her the appearance of a hamster.

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.

No one was about, yet he seemed to sense the presence of watching eyes behind blank windows.

His face was a mask betraying nothing.

Was there a place for him in this modern world, where systems mattered more than people?

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

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.

Oh yes he does. I may not be religious but I know my Bible. My mother saw to that. He bargains all right. But He's supposed to be just. If he wants belief He'd better provide some evidence.

I don't think God bargains.

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