"No one was about, yet he seemed to sense the presence of watching eyes behind blank windows."
Phyllis Dorothy James White, Baroness James of Holland Park, known professionally as P. D. James, was an English novelist and life peer. Her rise to fame came with her series of detective novels featuring the police commander and poet, Adam Dalgliesh.
Phyllis Dorothy James White, Baroness James of Holland Park, known professionally as P. D. James, was an English novelist and life peer. Her rise to fame came with her series of detective novels featuring the police commander and poet, Adam Dalgliesh.
View all quotes by P. D. James"How odd, he thought, that one could get used to beauty [i.e. in ones wife]. Once he had thought that any price would be worth paying if he could possess it, know it to be exclusively his, feed on it, be comforted, exalted, even sanctified by it. But you couldnt possess beauty any more than you could possess another human being."
"Cordelia read the inscription carved deep on the headstone. "At rest": the commonest epitaph of a generation to whom rest must have seemed the ultimate luxury, the supreme benediction. "Its a nice stone, isnt it?" "Yes, it is. I was admiring the lettering." "Cut deep, that is. It cost a mint of money but it was worth it. Thatll last, you see. Half the lettering here wont, its that shallow. It takes the pleasure out of a cemetery. I like to read the grave stones, like to know who people were and when they died and how long the women lived after they buried their men. It sets you wondering how they managed and whether they were lonely. Theres no use in a stone if you cant read the lettering."
"Over the tea Enid said: "You know who controls this estate, dont you?" "Yes, the children." "The kids, the bloody kids. Complain to the police or the council and you get a brick through your window. Tell em off and like as not you get an earful of foul language and burning rags through the letter-box next day. And if they catch the little bastards and take them to youth court, what happens? Bloody nothing. They come home laughing. Theyre in gangs now by the time theyre eight." Of course they are, thought Kate. How else can they survive?"
"What condemned a man [in a police investigation] was the inability to keep his mouth shut."
"Invited by Major Markland to sit, Cordelia perched on the edge of the sofa, half expecting the smooth cushion to let out a rude noise as it subsided beneath her. She found it, however, unexpectedly hard."
"I dont 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."