What society doesn't realize is that in the past, ordinary people respected learning. They respected books, and they don't now, or not… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
Do you know what people really want? Everyone, I mean. Everybody in the world is thinking: I wish there was just one… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
People who have lived through a war know that as it approaches, an at first secret, unacknowledged, elation begins, as if an… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
When I was a girl, the idea that the British Empire could ever end was absolutely inconceivable. And it just disappeared, like… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
It isn't only the terror everywhere, and the fear of being conscious of it, that freezes people. It's more than that. People… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
Anna was saying to herself: why do I always have this awful need to make other people see things as I do?… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
What I really can't stand about the feminist revolution is that it produced some of the smuggest, most unselfcritical people the world… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
Often the mass emotions are those which seem the noblest, best and most beautiful. And yet, inside a year, five years, a… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I'm going to make the obvious point that maybe the word neurotic means the condition of being highly conscious and developed. The… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I often feel like a dinosaur. I don't get the technology thing at all. I was on the Internet not long ago… — 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
Why were the Europeans bothered about the Soviet Union at all? It was nothing to do with us. China had nothing to… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
In times of war, as everyone knows, who has lived through one, or talked to soldiers when they are allowing themselves to… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
A foolhardy lot, we accepted it all, as we always do, never asked: "What is going to happen to us now, with… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
Because I was permanently confused, dissatisfied, unhappy, tormented by inadequacy, driven by wanting towards every kind of impossible future, the attitude of… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I have kept diaries, of course, but they can't be read for quite a long time. I'm always curious about people who… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
All political movements are like this - we are in the right, everyone else is in the wrong. The people on our… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
People don't mind immoral messages. They don't mind art which says that murder is good, cruelty is good, sex for sex's sake… — 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
