P.D. James Quotes

Learn to write by doing it. Read widely and wisely. Increase your word power. Find your own individual voice though practicing constantly. Go through the world with your eyes and ears open and learn to express that experience in words.

All Jane Austen novels have a common storyline: an attractive and virtuous young woman surmounts difficulties to achieve marriage to the man of her choice. This is the age-long convention of the romantic novel, but with Jane Austen, what we have is Mills & Boon written by a genius.

Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious.

It was reasonable to struggle, to suffer, perhaps even to die, for a more just, a more compassionate society, but not in a world with no future where, all to soon, the very words "justice," "compassion," "society," "struggle," "evil," would be unheard echoes on an empty air.

I don't want anyone to look to me, not for protection, not for happiness, not for love, not for anything.

Not so much two ships passing in the night as two ships sailing together for a time but always bound for different ports.

People were excited by violence. What, after all, was the sexual act but a voluntarily endured assault, a momentary death?

There are few activities so agreeable as spending a friend's money to your own satisfaction and his benefit.

Charm is often despised but I can never see why. No one has it who isn't capable of genuinely liking others, at least at the actual moment of meeting and speaking. Charm is always genuine; it may be superficial but it isn't false.

I learned early and at that kitchen table that there are ways of avoiding, without guilt, the commitments of love.

What do you mean by sound government?'
Good public order, no corruption in high places, freedom from fear and war and crime, a reasonably equitable distribution of wealth and resources, concern for the individual life.'
Then we haven't got sound government.

Beauty is intellectually confusing; it sabotages common sense.

If our sex life were determined by our first youthful experiments, most of the world would be doomed to celibacy. In no area of human experience are human beings more convinced that something better can be had only if they persevere.

Every island to a child is a treasure island.

Our parents' generation carried the past memorialized in paint, porcelain, and wood; we cast it off. Even our national history is remembered in terms of the worst we did, not the best.

Time didn't heal, but it anesthetized. The human mind could only feel so much.

Feel, he told himself, feel, feel, feel. Even if what you feel is pain, only let yourself feel.

The eyes were certainly memorable and beautiful, moist calves' eyes heavily lashed and with the same look of troubled pain at the unpredictability of the world's terrors.

You won't get love from a child if you don't give love.

What is there to be frightened of? We shall be dealing only with men.