Argument does not teach children or the immature. Only time and experience does that. — 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
Time is the River on which the leaves of our thoughts are carried into oblivion. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
As the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
There is a great line of women stretching out behind you into the past, and you have to seek them out and… — 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
Advice to young writers? Always the same advice: learn to trust our own judgment, learn inner independence, learn to trust that time… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
At no time, anywhere, was the population of a country told the truth: facts about events trickled into general consciousness much later,… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I am a person who continually destroys the possibilities of a future because of the numbers of alternative viewpoints I can focus… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
There is nothing more boring for an intelligent woman than to spend endless amounts of time with small children. — 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
“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
“But you know how it is—it’s always that moment, when a man looks all wounded in his masculinity, one can’t bear it,… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“I write all these remarks with exactly the same feeling as if I were writing a letter to post into the distant… — 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 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
“For a long time I felt I had done a very brave thing. There is nothing more boring for an intelligent woman… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“For suddenly it had changed into that gear when time is slower - as when, falling off a ladder, one has time… — 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
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
“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
“The fight with my various forms of dissatisfaction tires me; but I know this is not a personal fight. When I talk… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
This is a time when it is frightening to be alive, when it is hard to think of human beings as rational… — 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
“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
When a generation watches the young ones, their future, their responsibility, grow up, and when what they are to inherit is pitiful… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“Nevertheless two men good-humouredly greeted her, and both times she froze into nervous annoyance, and walked on with hastening steps. She got… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“As in the political sphere, the child is taught that he is free, a democrat, with a free will and a free… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
What they [critics of Lessing's switch to science fiction] didn't realize was that in science fiction is some of the best social… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
Once I read autobiography as what the writer thought about his or her life. Now I think, 'This is what they thought… — 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
It was all wrong, ugly, unhappy and coloured with cynicism, but nothing was tragic, there were no moments that could change anything… — 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
![“What they [critics of Lessing's switch to science fiction] didn't realize was that in science fiction is some of the best social fiction of our time.” quote by Doris Lessing](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/c58/doris-lessing-501_critics_what-they-critics-of-lessing-s-switch-to_990742.png)
