I didn't go to school much, so I taught myself what I knew from reading. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
There was a time when young people respected learning and literature and now they don't. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
Parents should leave books lying around marked ‘forbidden’ if they want their children to read. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
You know, looking at it objectively, I've written one or two good books. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
People who love literature have at least part of their minds immune from indoctrination. If you read, you can learn to think… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“You have to read a book at the right time for you, and I am sure this cannot be insisted on too… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I wanted to highlight that whole dreadful process in book publishing that 'nothing succeeds like success.' — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
...We try to have things both ways. We’ve always refused to live by the book and the rule; but then why start… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
One novel in five hundred or a thousand has the quality a novel should have to make it a novel -- the… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
My major aim was to shape a book which would make its own comment, a wordless statement: to talk through the way… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
Novels give you the matrix of emotions, give you the flavour of a time in a way formal history cannot. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I see every book as a problem that you have to solve. That is what dictates the form you use. It's not… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I think a writer's job is to provoke questions. I like to think that if someone's read a book of mine, they've… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I was writing all my childhood. And I wrote two novels when I was 17, which were terrible. And I'm not sorry… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
When a book's pattern and the shape of its inner life is as plain to the reader as it is to the… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
When the print revolution occurred 400 years ago, human beings lost a certain mental capacity, including a sense of memory. In Africa… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I think a writer's job is to provoke questions. I like to think that if someone's read a book of mine, they've… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
And it does no harm to repeat, as often as you can, 'Without me the literary industry would not exist: the publishers,… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
The point is, that the function of the novel seems to be changing; it has become an outpost of journalism; we read… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“And form this kind of thought has emerged a new conclusion: which is that it is not only childish of a writer… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“But there is no doubt that to attempt a novel of ideas is to give oneself a handicap: the parochialism of our… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“A few minutes later she was concentrating on her novel, which was half-finished. The theme of this book was a suicide. The… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
The current publishing scene is extremely good for the big, popular books. They sell them brilliantly, market them and all that. It… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“Yet I am incapable of writing the only kind of novel which interests me: a book powered with an intellectual or moral… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
The most exciting periods of literature have always been those when the critics were great. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
A woman writer, quitting love before literature when love lets her down, will put literature before love. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
Sometimes I pick up a book and I say: Well, so you've written it first, have you? Good for you. O.K., then… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
Some books are not read in the right way because they have skipped a stage of opinion, assume a crystallization of information… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
Some books are not read in the right way because they have skipped a stage of opinion, assume a crystallization of information in society… — Doris Lessing Copy Share
“In the morning, when she wishes me to wake, she crouches on my chest, and pats my face with her paw. Or, if I… — Doris Lessing Copy Share
You know, whenever women make imaginary female kingdoms in literature, they are always very permissive, to use the jargon word, and easy and generous… — Doris Lessing Copy Share
There is only one real sin and that is to persuade oneself that the second best is anything but second best. — Doris Lessing Copy Share
“She was using the water as she had used the fruit earlier—to calm herself, to assure herself of the possibility of normality. Yet all… — Doris Lessing Copy Share
I remember World War II when there were very few books, very little paper available. For me to walk into a shop or look… — Doris Lessing Copy Share
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… — Doris Lessing Copy Share
“While she strode rapidly through the ward to the door at the other end, she was able to see that every bed or cot… — Doris Lessing Copy Share
I do not think that marriage is one of my talents. I've been much happier unmarried than married. — Doris Lessing Copy Share
What really fascinates me is this need that is so strong now that if you read a work of the imagination you instantly have… — Doris Lessing Copy Share
“The charge that the United Nations are using bacteriological warfare in Korea cannot be dismissed merely because it would be insane.” — Doris Lessing Copy Share
What I did have, which others perhaps didn't, was a capacity for sticking at it, which really is the point, not the talent at… — Doris Lessing Copy Share
The human community is evolving... . We can survive anything you care to mention. We are supremely equipped to survive, to adapt and even… — Doris Lessing Copy Share
So love is rest? The cosy corner? The little nook? Sometimes it ought to be. Sometimes it is. — Doris Lessing Copy Share
