Quotes from The Private Patient

“If the screams of all earth's living creatures were one scream of pain, surely it would shake the stars.”
― P.D. James, quote from The Private Patient

“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 mystery it held for her, a mystery felt most strongly on a bell-chimed Sunday on her solitary exploration of its hidden alleys and squares? Time had fascinated her from childhood, its apparent power to move at different speeds, the dissolution it wrought on minds and bodies, her sense that each moment, all moments past and those to come, were fused into an illusory present which with every breath became the unalterable, indestructible past. In the City of London these moments were caught and solidified in stone and brick, in churches and monuments and in bridges which spanned the grey-brown ever-flowing Thames. She would walk out in spring or summer as early as six o'clock, double-locking the front door behind her, stepping into a silence more profound and mysterious than the absence of noise. Sometimes in this solitary perambulation it seenmed that her own footsteps were muted, as if some part of her were afraid to waken the dead who had walked thse streets and had known the same silence.”
― P.D. James, quote from The Private Patient

“Benton had a strong interest in helping to ensure that Warren's home life wasn't greatly disturbed: his wife was Cornish, and that morning Warren had arrived with six Cornish pasties of remarkable flavour and succulence.”
― P.D. James, quote from The Private Patient

“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, quote from The Private Patient

“They had lived to see their simple patriotism derided, their morality despised, their savings devalued. They caused no trouble. Millions of pounds of public money wasn’t regularly siphoned into their neighbourhoods in the hope of bribing, cajoling or coercing them into civic virtue. If they protested that their cities had become alien, their children taught in overcrowded schools where 90 per cent of the children spoke no English, they were lectured about the cardinal sin of racism by those more expensively and comfortably circumstanced. Unprotected by accountants, they were the milch-cows of the rapacious Revenue. No lucrative industry of social concern and psychological analysis had grown up to analyse and condone their inadequacies on the grounds of deprivation or poverty.”
― P.D. James, quote from The Private Patient

About the author

Popular quotes

“And you treat me wonderfully and keep all your promises.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from Islands in the Stream

“My son, you've seen the temporary fire
and the eternal fire; you have reached
the place past which my powers cannot see.
I've brought you here through intellect and art;
from now on, let your pleasure be your guide;
you're past the steep and past the narrow paths.
Look at the sun that shines upon your brow;
look at the grasses, flowers, and the shrubs
born here, spontaneously, of the earth.
Among them, you can rest or walk until
the coming of the glad and lovely eyes--
those eyes that weeping, sent me to your side.
Await no further word or sign from me:
your will is free, erect, and whole-- to act
against that will would be to err: therefore
I crown and miter you over yourself”
― Dante Alighieri, quote from Purgatorio

“Gli scienziati ritenevano che il limite inferiore delle dimensioni corporee per un essere intelligente fosse dieci centimetri, e quindi la possibilità di trovare un Aristotele che zampettava era praticamente pari a zero. Figuriamoci un Aristotele unicellulare.”
― Frank Schätzing, quote from The Swarm

“How can two living entities possessing intelligence and judgement ever be tied together for a lifetime?”
― R.K. Narayan, quote from Malgudi Days

“After a moment, he shook his head. “Quickly and mercifully is best. Clay? Go out and ask her into the alley.”
Clay looked at Jeremy as if he’d just been told to dance the rumba on a public thoroughfare.
I bit back a laugh. “Just walk over to her and point at the alley. Maybe say…I don’t know…something like ‘fifty bucks.’ ” I looked at Jeremy. “Does that sound right? Fifty?”
His brows shot up. “Why are you asking me?”
“I wasn’t—I just meant, as a general…” I threw up my hands. “How am I supposed to know how much a hooker costs?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
I sighed. “Fine, fifty bucks sounds good. It’s not like she knows what the going rate is anyway. Just say
that and nod at the alley. She’ll follow.”
Clay continued to stare at us in silent horror.
“Oh, for God’s sake, you’re ready to break her neck but you can’t—”
“I’ll do it,” Jeremy said, then shot a look my way. “Not that I have any more experience soliciting prostitutes than Clay does.”
“Never crossed my mind.”
A mock glare, then he headed out.”
― Kelley Armstrong, quote from Broken

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.