“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
But children can't be a center of life and a reason for being. They can be a thousand things that are delightful,… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“She had known it all the time: I'm so enormously exhausted, so utterly, basically tired, and in fibre of myself, that to… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I am always being described as having views that I've never had in my life. — 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
“she was wishing that whatever stage of her life she was in now could be got through quickly, for it was seeing… — 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
I hate to sound clichéd, but I do see life as a journey. How else can you see it? — 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
“Ella finds this story inside herself: A woman, loved by a man who criticises her throughout their long relationship for being unfaithful… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
You have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“Looking back over nearly a quarter of a century, she saw that that had been the characteristic of her life -passivity, adaptability… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
...She thinks, for the hundredth time, that in their emotional life all these intelligent men use a level so much lower than… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I hated the 1960's feminists," she says. "They were dogmatists, you see. In comes ideology, and out goes common sense. This is… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“A Nasrudin 'joke' may at first seem unfunny, or pointless, but will after study change and begin to reveal itself: you have… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
There's always this sense of incredulity that writers feel, because they're usually living flat and ordinary lives, because they have to. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“Most novels, if they are successful at all, are original in the sense that they report the existence of an area of… — 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
