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21 " She had quickly learned that to show unhappiness was to risk the loss of love. "
― P.D. James , An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (Cordelia Gray, #1)
22 " 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. "
― P.D. James , The Lighthouse (Adam Dalgliesh #13)
23 " …It was embarrassing now to recall with what little regret he had let slip his pleasures and preoccupations, the imminence of loss revealing them for what they were, at best only a solace, at worst a trivial squandering of time and energy. Now he had to lay hold of them again and believe that they were important, at least to himself. He doubted whether he would ever again believe them important to other people. "
― P.D. James
24 " Before he turned again the to the car his eye was caught by a small clump of unknown flowers. The pale pinkish white heads rose from a mossy pad on top of the wall and trembled delicately in the light breeze. Dalgliesh walked over and stood stock still, regarding in silence their unpretentious beauty. He smelt for the first time the clean half-illusory salt tang of the sea. The air moved warm and gentle against his skin. He was suddenly suffused with happiness and, as always in these rare transitory moments, intrigued by the pure physical nature of his joy. It moved along his veins, a gentle effervescence. Even to analyse its nature was to lose hold of it. But he recognized it for what it was, the first clear intimation since his illness that life could be good. "
― P.D. James , The Black Tower (Adam Dalgliesh #5)
25 " Authors always take rejection badly. They equate it with infanticide. "
26 " 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. "
27 " There is much that I remember but which is painful to dwell on. I see no need to write about these things. They are over and must be accepted, made sense of and forgiven, afforded no more than their proper place in a long life in which I have always known that happiness is a gift, not a right. "
― P.D. James , Time to Be in Earnest: A Fragment of Autobiography
28 " Never tell an unnecessary lie; the truth has great authority. The cleverest murders have been caught, not because they told the one essential lie, but because they continued to lie about unimportant detail when the truth could have done them no harm. "
29 " Benton had a strong interest in helping to ensure that Warren's home life wasn't greatly disturbed: his wife was Cornish, and that morning Warren had arrived with six Cornish pasties of remarkable flavour and succulence. "
― P.D. James , The Private Patient (Adam Dalgliesh, #14)
30 " Absolute nakedness was intrusive, confusing to the senses. Paradoxically, it both revealed and diminished identity. "
― P.D. James , Innocent Blood
31 " I can never see why people should be jealous. After all, youth isn't a matter of privilege, we all get the same share of it. Some people may be born at an easier time or be richer or more privileged than others, but that hasn't anything to do with being young "
32 " There are few couples as unhappy as those who are too proud to admit their unhappiness. "
― P.D. James , Unnatural Causes (Adam Dalgliesh #3)
33 " If from infancy you treat children as gods, they are liable in adulthood to act as devils. "
34 " 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 , The Children of Men
35 " 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. "
36 " All the motives for murder are covered by four Ls: Love, Lust, Lucre and Loathing. "
― P.D. James , The Murder Room (Adam Dalgliesh #12)
37 " What mattered at fifty-eight was what had mattered at eighteen: breeding and good bone structure. "
38 " Unnatural death always provoked a peculiar unease, an uncomfortable realization that there were still some things that might not be susceptible to bureaucratic control. "
39 " Her aunt and uncle worked fifteen hours a day in their desperate attempt to keep the corner shop in profit, and their Sundays were marked by exhaustion. The moral code by which they lived was that of cleanliness, respectability and prudence. Religion was for those who had the time for it, a middle-class indulgence. "
40 " When I am writing a novel, the setting, the characters, the action is clear in mind when I start -- so I believe. But it is only when these imaginings are written down, passing it seems almost physically from my brain down the arm to my moving hand that they begin to live and move and have their being and assume a different kind of truth. "