P.D. James

“Not so much two ships passing in the night as two ships sailing together for a time but always bound for different ports.”

“People were excited by violence. What, after all, was the sexual act but a voluntarily endured assault, a momentary death?”

“I don't want anyone to look to me, not for protection, not for happiness, not for love, not for anything.”

“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 a...”

“All Jane Austen novels have a common storyline: an attractive and virtuous young woman surmounts difficulties to achieve marriage to the man of her choice. This is the age-long convention of...”

“With the death of what Sydney Smith described as rational religon and the proponents of what remains sending out such confusing and uncertain messages, all civilised people have to be ethici...”

“What it was he had chiefly gained: a fascination with the complexity of the intellectual bastions which men could construct to withstand the tides of disbelief. His own disbelief had remaine...”

“The city which lay below was a charnel house built on multi-layered bones centuries older than those which lay beneath the cities of Hamburg or Dresden. Was this knowledge part of the myster...”