Skip to content

How odd, he thought, that one could get used to beauty [i.e. in one's 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 couldn't possess beauty any more than you could possess another human being.

— P. D. James A Certain Justice (1997)

Another quote →

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)

All P. D. James quotes →

Attribution

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.