D. James
D. James
country two decision
There are two options for any society: total prohibition as in a totalitarian state, or total license. Both avoid the ardours of decision. Both have the attraction of certainty. The difficult option is to decide where the line should be drawn and this, surely, is the responsiblity of any civilized and democratic country.
regret past way
There is no point in regretting any part of the past. The past can't now be altered, the future has yet to be lived, and consciously to experience every moment of the present is the only way to gain at least the illusion of immortality.
loss grieving tragedy
The tragedy of loss is not that we grieve, but that we cease to grieve, and then perhaps the dead are dead at last.
people alive clubs
I thought of inviting you to my other club but you know how it is. Lunching there is a useful way of reminding people that you're still alive, but the members will come up and congratulate you on the fact.
heart desire want
Can we ever break free of the devices and desires of our own hearts? Might not our conscience be telling us what we most want to hear?
dying remember cease
A nation that can't remember its dead will soon cease to be worth dying for.
letters spontaneous individual
No literary form is more revealing, more spontaneous or more individual than a letter.
fear perfect may
Perfect love may cast our fear, but fear is remarkably potent in casting out love.
children brave secret
Children live in occupied territory. The brave and the foolhardy openly rebel against authority, whether harsh or benign. But most tread warily, outwardly accommodating themselves to alien mores and edicts while living in secret their iconoclastic and subversive lives.
memories past fiction
to look back on one's life is to experience the capriciousness of memory. ... the past is not static. It can be relived only in memory, and memory is a device for forgetting as well as remembering. It, too, is not immutable. It rediscovers, reinvents, reorganizes. Like a passage of prose it can be revised and repunctuated. To that extent, every autobiography is a work of fiction and every work of fiction an autobiography.
charity dull helping
we live in a society which salves its conscience more by helping the interestingly unfortunate than the dull deserving ...
childhood prison appeals
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.
father equality skills
[My father and his friends] believed in equality for women without troubling to acquire the basic domestic skills which would have made that equality possible.
hands doctors life-and-death
If all power corrupts, then a doctor, who literally holds life and death in his hands, must be at particular risk.