P. D. James
P. D. James
Phyllis Dorothy James, Baroness James of Holland Park, OBE, FRSA, FRSL, known 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...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth3 August 1920
fiction autobiography courses
All fiction is largely autobiographical and much autobiography is, of course, fiction.
commitment kitchen guilt
I learned early and at that kitchen table that there are ways of avoiding, without guilt, the commitments of love.
people violence excited
People were excited by violence. What, after all, was the sexual act but a voluntarily endured assault, a momentary death?
school people childhood
I wonder if childhood is ever really happy. Just as well, perhaps. To be blissfully happy so young would leave one always seeking to recapture the unobtainable. Like those people who were always happiest at school or university. Always going back. No reunion ever missed. It always seemed to me rather pathetic.
want energy shows
It shows considerable wisdom to know what you want in life and then to direct all your energies towards getting it.
difficult generous
It is difficult to be generous-minded to those we have greatly harmed.
people too-late shows
Perhaps it's only when people are dead that we can safely show how much we cared about them. We know that it's too late then for them to do anything about it.
father men land
The world of the terminally ill is the world of neither the living nor the dead. I have watched others since I watched my father, and always with a sense of their strangeness. They sit and speak, and are spoken to, and listen, and even smile, but in spirit they have already moved away from us and there is no way we can enter their shadowy no-man’s-land.
order ideas guilt
I love the idea of bringing order out of disorder which is what the mystery is about. I like the way in which it affirms the sanity of human life and exorcises irrational guilts.
believe mean one-day
But what do you believe? I don't just mean religion. What are you sure of?" "That once I was not and that now I am. That one day I shall no longer be.
past discipline dying
History, which interprets the past to understand the present and confront the future is the least rewarding discipline for a dying species.
stars intelligent credit
It is surely unreasonable to credit that only one small star in the immensity of the universe is capable of developing and supporting intelligent life. But we shall not get to them and they will not come to us.
loneliness more-time needed
Most of my life I have needed more time to be on my own.
writing scientist there-comes-a-time
There comes a time when every scientist, even God, has to write off an experiment.