Home > Author > P.D. James
101 " Had he, during the course of his ministry, changed a single life? He recalled the words of a woman overheard when he was leaving his last parish. 'Father Martin is a priest of whom no one ever speaks ill.' It seemed to him now the most damning of indictments." (p. 243). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. "
― P.D. James , Death in Holy Orders (Adam Dalgliesh, #11)
102 " The dinosaur, with its small brain, had survived for a couple of million years; it had done better than Homo sapiens. "
― P.D. James , The Children of Men
103 " We were polluting the planet with our numbers; if we were breeding less it was to be welcomed. "
104 " The English, thought Kate, obviously regarded praying much as they did a necessary physical function, something best done in private. Dalgliesh apologized for interrupting her work: “We’re police officers and I’m afraid we’re here on police business. Were you "
― P.D. James , A Certain Justice (Adam Dalgliesh, #10)
105 " He said: “It’s possible to fight intolerance, stupidity and fanaticism when they come separately. When you get all three together it’s probably wiser to get out, if only to preserve your sanity.” They "
― P.D. James , Devices and Desires (Adam Dalgliesh #8)
106 " And would she herself have married Darcy had he been a penniless curate or a struggling attorney? ...Elizabeth knew that she was not formed for the sad contrivances of poverty. "
― P.D. James , Death Comes to Pemberley
107 " She would not wish anyone violently dead but, since it had happened, one might as well make the most of it. "
― P.D. James , A Mind to Murder (Adam Dalgliesh #2)
108 " It is interesting how often unintelligent, even stupid, women manage their emotional lives more satisfactorily than do their cleverer sisters. "
― P.D. James , Time to Be in Earnest: A Fragment of Autobiography
109 " Nothing and no one will separate us, not life nor death, nor principalities, nor powers, nor anything that is of the heavens nor anything that is of the earth. "
110 " Neighbors whose jealousy of such a triumph exceeded any satisfaction in the prospect of the union were able to console themselves by averring that Mr Darcy's pride and his wife's caustic wit would ensure that they lived together in the utmost misery for which even Pemberley and ten thousand a year could offer no consolation. "
111 " A successful murder depends on knowing your victim, "
― P.D. James , Sleep No More: Six Murderous Tales
112 " The cultured cop! I thought they were peculiar to detective novels. "
― P.D. James , Cover Her Face (Adam Dalgliesh #1)
113 " find depressing his determination to make his characters suffer even when a little common sense on both his part and theirs could avoid it. Tess is one of the most irritating young women in Victorian fiction. Won "
― P.D. James , The Private Patient (Adam Dalgliesh, #14)
114 " If you stood apart long enough, weren’t you in danger of stifling, perhaps even losing, that quickening spirit which the priests here would call the soul? "
115 " The young seldom lie convincingly. They haven’t had time to practise like the rest of us. "
116 " But he did grievously fear old age, mortal illness and disablement. He dreaded the loss of independence, the indignities of senility, the yielding up of privacy, the abomination of pain, the glimpses of patient compassion in the faces of friends who knew that their indulgences would not be claimed for long. "
― P.D. James , Shroud for a Nightingale (Adam Dalgliesh #4)
117 " had found it difficult to sleep since my husband had been killed, and now I lay rigid under the canopy of the four-poster re-living the extraordinary day, piecing together the anomalies, the small incidents, the clues, to form a satisfying pattern, trying to impose order on disorder. I think that is what I’ve been wanting to do all my life. It was that night at Stutleigh which decided my whole "
― P.D. James , The Mistletoe Murder And Other Stories
118 " Fear is the devil to hide. "
119 " A court of law is not constituted to establish the truth. "
― P.D. James , An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (Cordelia Gray, #1)
120 " Theo awoke to a weight of vague unease, not heavy enough to be called anxiety, but a mild unfocused depression, like the last tatters of an unremembered but disagreeable dream. "