You have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer. — 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
I don't think in terms of optimism and pessimism when writing a story. I am telling a story. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
The difficulty of writing about sex, for women, is that sex is best when not thought about, not analysed. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
Advice to young writers? Always the same advice: learn to trust our own judgment. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I was writing all my childhood. And I wrote two novels when I was 17, which were terrible. And I'm not sorry… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
In the writing process, the more the story cooks, the better. The brain works for you even when you are at rest.… — 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
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
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
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
I've always disliked words like inspiration. Writing is probably like a scientist thinking about some scientific problem, or an engineer about an… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I do not think writers ought ever to sit down and think they must write about some cause, or theme, or something.… — 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
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
