Biographile’s This Week in History remembers events of the past, and the icons that set them in motion. If the below isn't enough for you, read more inspiring author quotes.

This week we commemorate Phyllis Dorothy James, the Baroness James of Holland Park OBE, more commonly known as wildly popular crime novelist P.D. James, who was born this week (August 3) in 1920. Over the course of her ninety-four years, James lived a full and colorful life that would notably influence her writing.

From a young age she bore more than her fair share of responsibility for those around her. At the age of sixteen, when her mother was committed to a mental care facility, James's father pulled her out of school to help care for their family, and she subsequently got a job in a tax office to support the family's limited income.

Though she started writing in the 1950s, she continued to work and this part of her life took her through a number of varied experiences: War and marriage led her to support her family once again, though this time it was her husband whose WWII-induced mental illness prompted her into a new profession, as she took up working for a hospital board in London from 1949 to 1968. After the death of her husband in 1969, she worked in civil service for another decade. And in 1991 at the age of seventy-one she sat in the House of Lords as a Conservative.

Over the course of these same years, her novels were published, beginning in 1962 with Cover Her Face, and her heretofore industrious life inspired the writer we'd come to know and love. Her early work often butted up against bureaucracy, echoing her experiences in and with the British government, and her later novels would confront closed communities like publishing houses, barristers' chambers, and even a theological college.

All of these different hats James wore throughout her life -- daughter, civil servant, wife, nurse, mother, writer, and even Baroness -- gave her some pretty thought-provoking ideas on the nature of people as well as the nature of writing. And of course, like everything else in her life, the two frequently overlapped. So as we mark her birthday for the first time since her passing this November, we look back at some of her most profound thoughts on both.

On People:
1. "We can experience nothing but the present moment, live in no other second of time, and to understand this is as close as we can get to eternal life." (The Children of Men, 1992)

2. "We all die alone. We shall endure death as once we enjoyed birth. You can't share either experience." (The Children of Men, 1992)

3. "Love, always love. Perhaps that’s what we’re all looking for. And if we don’t get it early enough we panic in case we never shall." (A Certain Justice, 1997)

On Writing:
4. "I don’t 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." (The Guardian, 2009)

5. "I don't see why escapist literature should not also be a work of art." (Time to be Earnest, 1999)

6. "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 and learn to express that experience in words." (The Guardian, 2010)

On Both:
7. "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, 1999)

8. "The intention of any novelist must surely be to make that straight avenue to the human heart." (Time to be Earnest, 1999)

9. "Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other ¬people. Nothing that happens to a writer – however happy, however tragic – is ever wasted." (The Guardian, 2010)

Bonus Quote on the Nature of Being British
10. "We English are good at forgiving our enemies; it releases us from the obligation of liking our friends." (Shroud for a Nightingale, 1971)