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
Time and distance from the first and second world wars doesn't seem to lessen their horrors. — 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
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
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
When you look at my life, you can go back to the late 1930s, what I saw was, first of all, Hitler,… — 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
It's amazing what you find out about yourself when you write in the first person about someone very different from you. — 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
