P. D. James famous quotes

I don't think writers choose the genre, the genre chooses us. I wrote out of the wish to create order out of disorder, the liking of a pattern.
-- P. D. James

#Thinking #Order #Wish

Write what you need to write, not what is currently popular or what you think will sell.
-- P. D. James

#Writing #Thinking #Needs

It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.
-- P. D. James

#Life #Memories #Fall

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

#Night #Two #Sailing

When I heard, Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, I thought, Did he fall or was he pushed?
-- P. D. James

#Wall #Fall #Sat

Every island to a child is a treasure island.
-- P. D. James

#Children #Islands #Treasure

We can experience nothing but the present moment, live in no other second of time, and to understand this is as close as we can get to eternal life.
-- P. D. James

#Moments #Eternal Life #Present Moment

If this were fiction, could even the most brilliant novelist contrive to make credible so short a period in which pride had been subdued and prejudice overcome?
-- P. D. James

#Pride #Prejudice #Fiction

Don't just plan to write - write. It is only by writing, not dreaming about it, that we develop our own style.
-- P. D. James

#Dream #Writing #Style

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.
-- P. D. James

#Sex #World #Firsts

Of the four billion life forms which have existed on this planet, three billion, nine hundred and sixty million are now extinct. We don't know why. Some by wanton extinction, some through natural catastrophe, some destroyed by meteorites and asteroids. In the light of these mass extinctions it really does seem unreasonable to suppose that Homo sapiens should be exempt. Our species will have been one of the shortest-lived of all, a mere blink, you may say, in the eye of time.
-- P. D. James

#Eye #Light #Three

What a child doesn't receive he can seldom later give.
-- P. D. James

#Children #Parenting #Giving

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

#Life #Pain #Broken

I am fifty years old and I have never known what it is to love. I can write those words, know them to be true, but feel only the regret that a tone-deaf man must feel because he can't appreicate music, a regret less keen because it is for something never known, not for something lost.
-- P. D. James

#Regret #Writing #Men

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.
-- P. D. James

#People #Mind #Study

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.
-- P. D. James

#Eye #Writing #Voice

We English are good at forgiving our enemies; it releases us from the obligation of liking our friends.
-- P. D. James

#War #Forgiving #Enemy

Publishers don't nurse you; they buy and sell you.
-- P. D. James

#Writing #Nurse

The equally is a political theory, but no a practical politics.
-- P. D. James

#Political #Theory #Practicals

We who write in English are fortunate to have the richest and most versatile language in the world. Respect it.
-- P. D. James

#Writing #World #Language

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.
-- P. D. James

#May #Moments #Superficial

Daniel supposed he had a secret life. Most people did; it was hardly possible to live without one.
-- P. D. James

#People #Secret #Secret Life

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.
-- P. D. James

#Tragedy #Reason #Dread

Ambition, if it were to be savored, let alone achieved, had to be rooted in possibility.
-- P. D. James

#Ambition #Possibility

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

#Get Well #Mind #Heal

I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism.
-- P. D. James

#War #Believe #Political

the unforgivable was usually the most easily forgiven.
-- P. D. James

#Forgiveness #Unforgivable #Forgiven

gossip ... was like any other commodity in the marketplace. You received it only if you had something of value to give.
-- P. D. James

#Giving #Gossip #Commodity

we live in a society which salves its conscience more by helping the interestingly unfortunate than the dull deserving ...
-- P. D. James

#Charity #Helping #Welfare