Doris Lessing Quotes

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Last Updated on May 30, 2021

Change
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Nov 07, 2020

The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes, but you don't change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion.

More
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Nov 07, 2020

In the writing process, the more a story cooks, the better.

Opportunity
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Nov 07, 2020

Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.

Life
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Nov 07, 2020

That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.

Hard Work
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Nov 07, 2020

I don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach, one, that writing is hard work, and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer.

Important
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Nov 07, 2020

It is the mark of great people to treat trifles as trifles and important matters as important.

Law
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Nov 07, 2020

In university they don't tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools.

Library
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Nov 07, 2020

With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one - but no one at all - can tell you what to read and when and how.

Love
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Nov 07, 2020

Trust no friend without faults, and love a woman, but no angel.

Better
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Nov 07, 2020

Borrowing is not much better than begging; just as lending with interest is not much better than stealing.

Diagram
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Nov 07, 2020

If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air.

Nov 07, 2020

This world is run by people who know how to do things. They know how things work. They are equipped. Up there, there's a layer of people who run everything. But we - we're just peasants. We don't understand what's going on, and we can't do anything.

People
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Nov 07, 2020

Some people obtain fame, others deserve it.

Always
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Nov 07, 2020

For the last third of life there remains only work. It alone is always stimulating, rejuvenating, exciting and satisfying.

Love
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Nov 07, 2020

What's terrible is to pretend that second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.

Love
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Nov 07, 2020

What is a hero without love for mankind.

Only
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Nov 07, 2020

There is only one real sin and that is to persuade oneself that the second best is anything but second best.

Ever
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Nov 07, 2020

There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be.

Pearls
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Nov 07, 2020

Pearls mean tears.

Analysis
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Nov 07, 2020

Literature is analysis after the event.

Small
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Nov 07, 2020

Small things amuse small minds.

Science
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Nov 07, 2020

Space or science fiction has become a dialect for our time.

Good
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Nov 07, 2020

Man, who is he? Too bad, to be the work of God: Too good for the work of chance!

Picture
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Nov 07, 2020

It is terrible to destroy a person's picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction.

Like
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Nov 07, 2020

Pleasure resorts are like film stars and royalty... embarrassed by the figures they cut in the fantasies of people who have never met them.

Nov 07, 2020

You can't be a Red if you're married to a civil servant.

Like
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Nov 07, 2020

We use our parents like recurring dreams, to be entered into when needed.

Europe
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Nov 07, 2020

I've won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one. I'm delighted to win them all, the whole lot.

Me
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Nov 07, 2020

They can't give a Nobel to someone who's dead so I think they were probably thinking they had better give it to me now before I popped off.

Children
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Nov 07, 2020

There is nothing more boring for an intelligent woman than to spend endless amounts of time with small children.

Been
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Nov 07, 2020

I wasn't an active feminist in the '60s, never have been.

Nov 07, 2020

What the feminists want of me is something they haven't examined because it comes from religion. They want me to bear witness.

Give
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Nov 07, 2020

All I do is give interviews and spend time being photographed.

Everything
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Nov 07, 2020

Everything all the time in a city is extraordinary!

Parents
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Nov 07, 2020

I think kids ought to travel. I think it's very good to carry kids around. It's good for them. Of course it's tough on the parents.

First
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Nov 07, 2020

My father was in the First World War.

Me
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Nov 07, 2020

My mother was a woman who was very frustrated. She had a great deal of ability, and all this energy went into me and my brother.

Mother
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Nov 07, 2020

I wanted to write about my mother as she should have been if she had not been messed up by World War I.

Movement
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Nov 07, 2020

I don't think that the feminist movement has done much for the characters of women.

Never
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Nov 07, 2020

I have ideas that I will probably never write now.

Eighteen
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Nov 07, 2020

It usually takes me a year to do a book. A year or eighteen months.

Optimism
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Nov 07, 2020

I don't think in terms of optimism and pessimism when writing a story. I am telling a story.

Human Race
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Nov 07, 2020

The human race has been telling stories since it began.

How
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Nov 07, 2020

A story is how we construct our experiences.

Nov 07, 2020

I'm compulsive.

Pretty
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Nov 07, 2020

I was a nursemaid. And it was pretty boring.

Nov 07, 2020

I never stopped reading.

Girl
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Nov 07, 2020

You know, when I was a girl, the idea that the British Empire could ever end was absolutely inconceivable. And it just disappeared, like all the other empires.

God
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Nov 07, 2020

God knows why nobody ever learns from the preceding generation - but they don't.

Nov 07, 2020

I'm just a story teller.

Unhappy
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Nov 07, 2020

I'm very unhappy when I'm not writing.

Nov 07, 2020

Sometimes I think what I write is funny in its quiet way.

Idea
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Nov 07, 2020

A writer falls in love with an idea and gets carried away.

Got
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Nov 07, 2020

I haven't got the energy to write now.

Nov 07, 2020

When you're young you think that you're going to sail into a lovely lake of quietude and peace. This is profoundly untrue.

Father
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Nov 07, 2020

My father was always so mingled with rage at his life.

Mothers
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Nov 07, 2020

All my friends' mothers were appalling women.

Nov 07, 2020

What I really can't stand about the feminist revolution is that it produced some of the smuggest, most unselfcritical people the world has ever seen. They are horrible.

Men
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Nov 07, 2020

Men are restless, adventurous. Women are conservative - despite what current ideology says.

Like
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Nov 07, 2020

You cannot escape the fact that women mould your first five years, whether you like it or not. And I can't say I do like it very much.

Jump
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Nov 07, 2020

The Nobel Prize is run by a self-perpetuated committee. They vote for themselves and get the world's publishing industry to jump to their tune.

Dead
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Nov 07, 2020

I'll be pleased when I'm dead. That will let me off worrying about all these wars.

Mother
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Nov 07, 2020

My mother died happily of a stroke in her seventies.

False
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Nov 07, 2020

Sentimentality is intolerable because it is false feeling.

Happened
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Nov 07, 2020

September 11 was terrible but, if one goes back over the history of the IRA, what happened to the Americans wasn't that terrible.

Heroes
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Nov 07, 2020

I never thought of London in terms of possible heroes - of course, there are thousands. It's a very talented city.

Got
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Nov 07, 2020

As soon as I got the Nobel Prize my back collapsed and I was in hospital.

Literature
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Nov 07, 2020

There was a time when young people respected learning and literature and now they don't.

Myself
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Nov 07, 2020

I didn't go to school much, so I taught myself what I knew from reading.

Movement
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Nov 07, 2020

I think a lot of romanticizing has gone on with the women's movement.

Our
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Nov 07, 2020

Our society is dependent on some precarious mechanisms, and they are very dicey. They can easily collapse.

Inside
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Nov 07, 2020

The critics slap labels on you and then expect you to talk inside their terms.

Bore
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Nov 07, 2020

Whenever I met anyone who knew anything, I would bore them stiff until they told me what they knew.

People
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Nov 07, 2020

When I became political and Communist, it was because they were the only people I had ever met who fought the color bar in their lives.

Nov 07, 2020

I do not think that marriage is one of my talents. I've been much happier unmarried than married.

Like
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Nov 07, 2020

I wanted to highlight that whole dreadful process in book publishing that 'nothing succeeds like success.'

Nov 07, 2020

What really fascinates me is this need that is so strong now that if you read a work of the imagination you instantly have to say, 'Oh, what this really is is so-and-so,' reducing it to a simple formula.

Everything
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Nov 07, 2020

We like to think we can solve everything, but we can't always.

Permanent
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Nov 07, 2020

I'm sure that everybody feels a kind of permanent anguish about what's going on in the world.

Never
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Nov 07, 2020

I do have a sense, and I've never not had it, of how easily things can vanish.

Nov 07, 2020

The thing is, I haven't changed at all.

Life
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Nov 07, 2020

I am always being described as having views that I've never had in my life.

Life
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Nov 07, 2020

I've worked hard all my life. You have to if you want to get things done.

Man
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Nov 07, 2020

There's an unconscious bias in our society: girls are wonderful; boys are terrible. And to be a boy, or young man, growing up, having to listen to all this, it must be painful.

First
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Nov 07, 2020

Time and distance from the first and second world wars doesn't seem to lessen their horrors.

Big
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Nov 07, 2020

When I started, there were no big interviews, no television, no profiles and all that. The publishers were quite shockingly uncommercial, but they did look after their writers.

Nov 07, 2020

If you are a young writer today, it's very hard.

Past
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Nov 07, 2020

What society doesn't realize is that in the past, ordinary people respected learning. They respected books, and they don't now, or not very much. That whole respect for serious literature and learning has disappeared.

Lovely
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Nov 07, 2020

It's lovely to have money to give away - that's the bonus of winning the Nobel.

Black
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Nov 07, 2020

Things are not quite so simple always as black and white.

Daughter
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Nov 07, 2020

I have a daughter and two grand-daughters and a great grandson in Africa, in Cape Town.

Get Married
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Nov 07, 2020

When there's a war, people get married.

Know
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Nov 07, 2020

You know, looking at it objectively, I've written one or two good books.

don't Care
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Nov 07, 2020

It's very interesting what you don't care about.

I Am
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Nov 07, 2020

I am your original autodidact.

Fame
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Nov 07, 2020

I'm not one of those writers that sits worrying about posthumous fame.

Myself
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Nov 07, 2020

When young I did my best to undo that bit of the British Empire I found myself in: that is, old Southern Rhodesia.

Beginning
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Nov 07, 2020

I always hated Tony Blair, from the beginning.

Feel
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Nov 07, 2020

There's always this sense of incredulity that writers feel, because they're usually living flat and ordinary lives, because they have to.

Go
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Nov 07, 2020

I thought that would go without saying, that if a mother gives up her children, it's very painful.

Evil
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Nov 07, 2020

I hate Iran. I hate the Iranian government. It's a cruel and evil government.

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