I hate to sound clichéd, but I do see life as a journey. How else can you see it? — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I am interested only in stretching myself, on living as fully as I can. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I've worked hard all my life. You have to if you want to get things done. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I am always being described as having views that I've never had in my life. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“Harriet’s parents had taken it for granted that family life was the basis for a happy one.” — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
You have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
There's always this sense of incredulity that writers feel, because they're usually living flat and ordinary lives, because they have to. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
What is terrible is that after every one of the phases of my life is finished, I am left with no more… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“That’s what life is, getting used to things that are really intolerable…” Her eyes reddened and filled, and again she determinedly blinked… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“This is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.” — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
For the last third of life there remains only work. It alone is always stimulating, rejuvenating, exciting and satisfying. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I hated the 1960's feminists," she says. "They were dogmatists, you see. In comes ideology, and out goes common sense. This is… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“Looking back over nearly a quarter of a century, she saw that that had been the characteristic of her life -passivity, adaptability… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“He leaves and she thinks for the hundredth time that in their emotional life all these intelligent men use a level so… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
...She thinks, for the hundredth time, that in their emotional life all these intelligent men use a level so much lower than… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
You are taken, shaken, by moments when the improbability of our lives comes over you like a fever. Everything is remarkable, people,… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
Perhaps it is not such a bad marriage after all? There are innumerable marriages where two people, both twisted and wrong in… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
You should write, first of all, to please yourself. You shouldn't care a damn about anybody else at all. But writing can't… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“she was wishing that whatever stage of her life she was in now could be got through quickly, for it was seeing… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I think I am at the end of a certain phase of my life. What I'm on the lookout for now is… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
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… — 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
So a war begins. Into a peace-time life, comes an announcement, a threat. A bomb drops somewhere, potential traitors are whisked off… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“So a war begins. Into a peace-time life, comes an announcement, a threat. A bomb drops somewhere, potential traitors are whisked off… — 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
“She had known it all the time: I'm so enormously exhausted, so utterly, basically tired, and in fibre of myself, that to… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I think I am at the end of a certain phase of my life. What I'm on the lookout for now is… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“A Nasrudin 'joke' may at first seem unfunny, or pointless, but will after study change and begin to reveal itself: you have… — 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
“What is terrible is that after every one of the phases of my life is finished, I am left with no more… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“Ella finds this story inside herself: A woman, loved by a man who criticises her throughout their long relationship for being unfaithful… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“The human being is given by Nature little more energy than what is needed to maintain the species; to reproduce and to… — 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
“So much of my life has been twisted and painful that now when happiness floods right through me like being flooded over… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“she was wishing that whatever stage of her life she ws in now could be got through quickly, for it was seeming… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“All sanity depends on this: that it should be a delight to feel the roughness of a carpet under smooth soles, a… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“The thought [behind the Golden Notebook] was that to divide off and compartmentalize living was dangerous and led to nothing but trouble.… — 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
![“The thought [behind the Golden Notebook] was that to divide off and compartmentalize living was dangerous and led to nothing but trouble. Old, young, black, white, men, women, capitalism, socialism: these great dichotomies undo us, force us into unreal categorization, make us look for what…” quote by Doris Lessing](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/cf0/doris-lessing-501_black-white_the-thought-behind-the-golden-notebook-w_696455.jpg)
