What the detective story is about is not murder but the restoration of order. P. D. James More Quotes by P. D. James More Quotes From P. D. James 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 wish order thinking Write what you need to write, not what is currently popular or what you think will sell. P. D. James writing needs thinking It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life. P. D. James memories life fall When I heard, Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, I thought, Did he fall or was he pushed? P. D. James sat wall fall 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 political war believe 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. P. D. James memories looks past I knew the facts of death before I knew the facts of life. There never was a time when I didn't see the skull beneath the skin. P. D. James skulls skins facts Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft. The greater your vocabulary the more effective your writing. We who write in English are fortunate to have the richest and most versatile language in the world. Respect it. P. D. James voice eye writing 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 eternal-life eternal moments Authors always take rejection badly. They equate it with infanticide. P. D. James infanticide rejection 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 new-experiences mind people 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. P. D. James humbug politician believe Man is diminished if he lives without knowledge of his past; without hope of a future he becomes a beast. P. D. James beast men past We who write in English are fortunate to have the richest and most versatile language in the world. Respect it. P. D. James language writing world The modern holy trinity is money, sex and celebrity. P. D. James modern sex religion 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 style dream writing 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 mass-extinction light eye Work did bestow dignity, status, meaning. Wasn't that why people dreaded unemployment, why some men found retirement so traumatic? P. D. James unemployment retirement people The world is changed not by the self-regarding, but by men and women prepared to make fools of themselves. P. D. James self men world 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. P. D. James risk age reality
