“This is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.” — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“Harriet’s parents had taken it for granted that family life was the basis for a happy one.” — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“What is terrible is that after every one of the phases of my life is finished, I am left with no more… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
For the last third of life there remains only work. It alone is always stimulating, rejuvenating, exciting and satisfying. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
All one's life as a young woman one is on show, a focus of attention, people notice you. You set yourself up… — 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
What is terrible is that after every one of the phases of my life is finished, I am left with no more… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“The thought [behind the Golden Notebook] was that to divide off and compartmentalize living was dangerous and led to nothing but trouble.… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I've worked hard all my life. You have to if you want to get things done. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“That’s what life is, getting used to things that are really intolerable…” Her eyes reddened and filled, and again she determinedly blinked… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way. — 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
“So much of my life has been twisted and painful that now when happiness floods right through me like being flooded over… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“she was wishing that whatever stage of her life she ws in now could be got through quickly, for it was seeming… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
It is my belief...that the talents every child has, regardless of his official 'I.Q,' could stay with him through life, to enrich… — 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
Perhaps it is not such a bad marriage after all? There are innumerable marriages where two people, both twisted and wrong in… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I am interested only in stretching myself, on living as fully as I can. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“All sanity depends on this: that it should be a delight to feel the roughness of a carpet under smooth soles, a… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I think I am at the end of a certain phase of my life. What I'm on the lookout for now is… — 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
I think I am at the end of a certain phase of my life. What I'm on the lookout for now is… — 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
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
“The human being is given by Nature little more energy than what is needed to maintain the species; to reproduce and to… — 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
