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
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.
men past beast
Man is diminished if he lives without knowledge of his past; without hope of a future he becomes a beast.
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.
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.
new-experiences people mind
Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other people. Nothing that happens to a writer – however happy, however tragic – is ever wasted.
writing world language
We who write in English are fortunate to have the richest and most versatile language in the world. Respect it.
gives god throw
God gives every bird his worm, but He does not throw it into the nest.
alzheimers tragedy disease
The great tragedy of Alzheimer's disease, and the reason why we dread it, is that it leaves us with no defence, not even against those who love us.
writing bad-writing discrimination
Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious.
kindness may firsts
Human kindness is like a defective tap, the first gush may be impressive but the stream soon dries up.
couple unhappy proud
There are few couples as unhappy as those who are too proud to admit their unhappiness.
people secret today
In 1930s mysteries, all sorts of motives were credible which aren't credible today, especially motives of preventing guilty sexual secrets from coming out. Nowadays, people sell their guilty sexual secrets.
years literature care
Great literature cannot grow from a neglected or impoverished soil. Only if we actually tend or care will it transpire that every hundred years or so we might get a Middlemarch.
men cities violence
A man who lives with nature is used to violence and is companionable with death. There is more violence in an English hedgerow than in the meanest streets of a great city.