It is the mark of great people to treat trifles as trifles and important matters as important. — 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
We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
Pleasure resorts are like film stars and royalty... embarrassed by the figures they cut in the fantasies of people who have never… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I'm always astounded at the way we automatically look at what divides and separates us. We never look at what people have… — 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
We are several people fitted inside each other. Chinese boxes. Our bodies are the outside box. Or the inside one if you… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
After a certain age - and for some of us that can be very young - there are no new people, beasts,… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
[Some people think] that storytelling is telling jokes. So they have to be discouraged! Then others think that storytelling-is like an encounter… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
Very few people really care about freedom, about liberty, about the truth, very few. Very few people have guts, the kind of… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
The Golden Notebook for some reason surprised people but it was no more than you would hear women say in their kitchens… — 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
The older I get the more secrets I have, never to be revealed and this, I know, is a common condition of… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
In fact I've reached the stage where I look at people and say - he or she, they are whole at all… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
Loneliness, she thought, was craving for other people's company. But she did not know that loneliness can be an unnoticed cramping of… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I was in New York when Clinton was elected the first time, and everyone I knew was in a state of mad… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
But it isn't only the terror everywhere, and the fear of being conscious of it, that freezes people. It's more than that.… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I stood looking down out of the window. The street seemed miles down. Suddenly I felt as if I'd flung myself out… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
The first casualty in any war is the truth. In World War II, I was part of a group of people who… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I think people are always looking for gurus. It's the easiest thing in the world to become a guru. It's quite terrifying.… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
A public library is the most democratic thing in the world. What can be found there has undone dictators and tyrants: demagogues… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
If she had been left alone she would have gone on, in her own way, enjoying herself thoroughly, until people found one… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
The 1960s was probably the first time in history that young people were recognized as a big group of consumers and as… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
Mother's room, and mother's need for privacy become a valuable lesson in respect for other people's rights. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I am so happy to be communicating with people on this newest of new wavelengths which to some older people must seem… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
When I became political and Communist, it was because they were the only people I had ever met who fought the color… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
Capable people do not understand incapacity; clever people do not understand stupidity. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I spend a good deal of time wondering how we will seem to the people who come after us. This is not… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes,… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
When I was starting out, science fiction was a little genre over there, which only a few people read. But now --… — 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
The whole process of writing is a setting at a distance. That is the value of it - to the writer, and… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
All one's life as a young woman one is on show, a focus of attention, people notice you. You set yourself up… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
The automatic reaction of practically any young person is, at once, against authority. That, I think, began in the First World War… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
This world is run by people who know how to do things. They know how things work. They are equipped. Up there,… — 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
![“[Some people think] that storytelling is telling jokes. So they have to be discouraged! Then others think that storytelling-is like an encounter group . . .” quote by Doris Lessing](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/46e/doris-lessing-501_discouraged_some-people-think-that-storytelling-is-t_2911458.jpg)
