I'm sure that everybody feels a kind of permanent anguish about what's going on in the world. — 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. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I wanted to write about my mother as she should have been if she had not been messed up by World War… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
Time and distance from the first and second world wars doesn't seem to lessen their horrors. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
The Nobel Prize is run by a self-perpetuated committee. They vote for themselves and get the world's publishing industry to jump to… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
The world is only tolerable because of the empty places in it...when the world's filled up, we'll have to get hold of… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I got married and I had children because of the Second World War, as all of us did, exclaiming, 'Oh, no, we… — 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
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
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
All politicians are not the same. I've never felt that way. What is the same is that voters get very excited about… — 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
The storyteller is deep inside everyone of us. The story-maker is always with us. Let us suppose our world is attacked by… — 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
In Shanghai, I saw great contrasts. On one street there would be impressive shops selling copies of the latest word in glamorous… — 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
The novel has become a function of the fragmented society, the fragmented consciousness. Human beings are so divided, are becoming more and… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
London has changed enormously and so have the English in the past decade. They're more like Americans and more like Europeans, too.… — 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
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 remember World War II when there were very few books, very little paper available. For me to walk into a shop… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
There are many feminists who work in the media, and they think that feminism is very important. It is in their own… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
The World War I, I'm a child of World War I. And I really know about the children of war. Because both… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
America can be a very hysterical country intellectually and very puritanical, too. You probably have fun in private, but to the rest… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I don't think that Women's Liberation will change much though -- not because there is anything wrong with their aims, but because… — 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
