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
Sometimes I pick up a book and I say: Well, so you've written it first, have you? Good for you. O.K., then… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
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
For she was of that generation who, having found nothing in religion, had formed themselves through literature. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“And form this kind of thought has emerged a new conclusion: which is that it is not only childish of a writer… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I think a writer's job is to provoke questions. I like to think that if someone's read a book of mine, they've… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I see every book as a problem that you have to solve. That is what dictates the form you use. It's not… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading… — 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
“Yet I am incapable of writing the only kind of novel which interests me: a book powered with an intellectual or moral… — 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
I didn't go to school much, so I taught myself what I knew from reading. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I wanted to highlight that whole dreadful process in book publishing that 'nothing succeeds like success.' — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
Recently, the science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke talked about the ways the lives of human beings will be changed in the… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
The point is, that the function of the novel seems to be changing; it has become an outpost of journalism; we read… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“Saul came into my room, prowling around and around, restless, and he saw the new notebook, and pounced on it. “Oh this… — 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 publishers are here, I've got a feeling they will agree with whatever I say because the publishing houses are packed full… — 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
“Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“Remember that for all the books we have in print, are as many that have never reached print, have never been written… — 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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
I do not think that marriage is one of my talents. I've been much happier unmarried than married. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
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 Image
“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 Image
