P. D. James
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.Collection: Struggle
Old age makes caricatures of us all.Collection: Age
Metaphysical speculation is about as pointless as a discussion on the meaning of one's lungs. They're for breathing.Collection: Breathing
I still occasionally need to struggle but I now fear it less. The weapons I fight it with are also my consolations: books, music, food, wine, nature.Collection: Struggle
We are often more merciful to our animals than we are to each other.Collection: Cat
Authors always take rejection badly. They equate it with infanticide.Collection: Rejection
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.Collection: May
Not so much two ships passing in the night as two ships sailing together for a time but always bound for different ports.Collection: Night
We who write in English are fortunate to have the richest and most versatile language in the world. Respect it.Collection: Writing
A politician is required to listen to humbug, talk humbug, condone humbug. The most we can hope for is that we don't actually believe it.Collection: Believe
In youth we take egregious risks because death has no reality for us. Youth goes caparisoned in immortality. It is only in middle age that we are shadowed by the awareness of the transitoriness of life.Collection: Reality
The greatest mystery of all is the human heart.Collection: Heart
All fiction is largely autobiographical and much autobiography is, of course, fiction.Collection: Fiction
It's easy to get a reputation for wisdom. It's only necessary to live long, speak little and do less.Collection: Inspirational
Any visitor to an historic country town or city quickly becomes aware in his or her peregrinations that the most attractive houses in the centre are invariably the offices of lawyers.Collection: Country
Crime fiction confirms our belief, despite some evidence to the contrary, that we live in a rational, comprehensible, and moral universe.Collection: Fiction
Perfect love may cast our fear, but fear is remarkably potent in casting out love.Collection: Fear
Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft.Collection: Raw Materials
If you are proposing to commit a sin it is as well to commit it with intelligence. Otherwise you are insulting God as well as defying Him, don't you think?Collection: Thinking
Publishers don't nurse you; they buy and sell you.Collection: Writing
the most successful marriages were always based on both partners feeling that they had done rather well for themselves.Collection: Successful
I don't see why escapist literature shouldn't also be a work of art.Collection: Art
All these problems [deciding cases] are easier for people who believe in God. Those of us who don't or can't have to do the best we can. That's what the law is, the best we can do. Human justice is imperfect, but it's the only justice we have.Collection: Believe
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.Collection: People
First-class travel, provided one hasn't to pay for it oneself, is the most insidiously addictive of life's luxuries.Collection: Class
Murder is the unique crime, the only one for which we can never make reparation to the victim.Collection: Unique
There are few couples as unhappy as those who are too proud to admit their unhappiness.Collection: Couple
read widely, not in order to copy someone else's style, but to learn to appreciate and recognize good writing and to see how the best writers have achieved their result. Poor writing is, unfortunately, infectious and should be avoided.Collection: Writing
gossip ... was like any other commodity in the marketplace. You received it only if you had something of value to give.Collection: Giving
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.Collection: Regret
Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious.Collection: Writing
Without the hope of posterity, for our race if not for ourselves, without the assurance that we being dead yet live, all pleasures of the mind and senses sometimes seem to me no more than pathetic and crumbling defences shored up against our ruin.Collection: Race
A picnic may well be a metaphor for life. The essentials for happiness are the right company, moderate if sanguine expectations and a reasonable standard of physical sustenance and comfort, the whole being bedeviled by the belief that there is always something better to be had if only one presses on.Collection: Expectations
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.Collection: Children
I learned early and at that kitchen table that there are ways of avoiding, without guilt, the commitments of love.Collection: Commitment
The weekend break had begun with the usual resentment and had continued with half-repressed ill humour. It was, of course, his fault. He had been more ready to hurt his wife's feelings and deprive his daughter than inconvenience a pub bar full of strangers. He wished there could be one memory of his dead child which wasn't tainted with guilt and regret.Collection: Daughter
Most of my life I have needed more time to be on my own.Collection: Loneliness
Death ... obliterates family resemblance as it does personality: there is no affinity between the living and the dead.Collection: Personality
the unforgivable was usually the most easily forgiven.Collection: Forgiveness
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.Collection: School
For me, the dead remain dead. If I couldn't believe that, I don't think I could go on living.Collection: Believe
People were excited by violence. What, after all, was the sexual act but a voluntarily endured assault, a momentary death?Collection: People
I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism . . . The only way to react is to get up in the morning and start the day by saying four or five vastly politically incorrect things before breakfast!Collection: Morning
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.Collection: Country
Suicide is the most private and mysterious of acts, inexplicable because the chief actor is never there to explain it.Collection: Suicide
It is difficult to be generous-minded to those we have greatly harmed.Collection: Difficult
No literary form is more revealing, more spontaneous or more individual than a letter.Collection: Letters
Of all the things that human beings did together, the sexual act was the one with the most various of reasons.Collection: Together
I find it extraordinary that a straightforward if inelegant device for ensuring the survival of the species should involve human beings in such emotional turmoil. Does sex have to be taken so seriously?Collection: Sex