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Marriage is both the most public and the most secret of institutions, its miseries as irritatingly insistent as a hacking cough, its private malaise less easily diagnosed. And nothing is so destructive as unhappiness to social life. No one wants to sit in embarrassed silence while his host and hostess demonstrate their mutual incompatibility and dislike.

— P. D. James

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More quotes by P. D. James

"But what is the use of making the world more beautiful if the people who live in it can't love one another?"

An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972)

"Old age can be very frightening, Commander. A lawyer whose mind is apt to go blank isn't just inefficient, he's dangerous."

A Certain Justice (1997)

Every novelist write what he or she needs to write, a subconscious compulsion to express and explain his unique view of reality.

Time to be Earnest – a Fragment of Biography (1999)

"Hunch is a good servant but a poor master."

An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972)

If from infancy you treat children as gods they are liable in adulthood to act as devils.

The Children of Men (1992)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: P. D. James (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.