They can't give a Nobel to someone who's dead so I think they were probably thinking they had better give it to… — 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
The human community is evolving... . We can survive anything you care to mention. We are supremely equipped to survive, to adapt… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I don't think San Francisco needs defending. I never meet anyone who doesn't love the place, Americans or others. — 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
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 think kids ought to travel. I think it's very good to carry kids around. It's good for them. Of course it's… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I don't think that the feminist movement has done much for the characters of women. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
A woman without a man cannot meet a man, any man, of any age, without thinking, even if it's for a half-second,… — 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
If what we think now is different from what we thought then, we can take it for granted that what we think… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
A foolhardy lot, we accepted it all, as we always do, never asked: "What is going to happen to us now, with… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I woke up one morning, and I couldn't move my arm. It was the oddest thing, the paralysis. I called up a… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
When you're young you think that you're going to sail into a lovely lake of quietude and peace. This is profoundly untrue. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
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
There are many feminists who work in the media, and they think that feminism is very important. It is in their own… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
[The Golden Notebook] was not a trumpet for Women's Liberation. It described many female emotions of aggression, hostility, resentment. It put them… — 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
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
There is a whole generation of women and it was as if their lives came to a stop when they had children.… — 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
Do you know what people really want? Everyone, I mean. Everybody in the world is thinking: I wish there was just one… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
Sometimes I dislike women, I dislike us all, because of our capacity for not-thinking when it suits us; we choose not to… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I think novelists perform many useful tasks for their fellow citizens, but one of the most valuable is this: to enable us… — 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