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Thinking Quotes by Doris Lessing

45 Thinking quotes by Doris Lessing

All Thinking quotes Doris Lessing’s page

A writer says marriage isn’t a talent, and she feels happier staying single. Lessing’s thoughts also argue that writers should provoke questions rather than follow a set theme, and that children benefit from traveling and seeing the world. She adds a skeptical view of how much the feminist movement has helped female characters.

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Sometimes I think what I write is funny in its quiet way.

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I don't think that the feminist movement has done much for the characters of women.

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If you read, you can learn to think for yourself.

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Bed is the best place for reading, thinking, or doing nothing.

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I don't think in terms of optimism and pessimism when writing a story. I am telling a story.

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I do not think that marriage is one of my talents. I've been much happier unmarried than married.

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A woman without a man cannot meet a man, any man, of any age, without thinking, even if it's for a half-second,…

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When you're young you think that you're going to sail into a lovely lake of quietude and peace. This is profoundly untrue.

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If what we think now is different from what we thought then, we can take it for granted that what we think…

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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…

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“Sometimes I dislike women I dislike us all because of our capacity for not thinking when it suits us...”

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Sometimes I dislike women, I dislike us all, because of our capacity for not-thinking when it suits us; we choose not to…

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...She thinks, for the hundredth time, that in their emotional life all these intelligent men use a level so much lower than…

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The human community is evolving... . We can survive anything you care to mention. We are supremely equipped to survive, to adapt…

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I think I am at the end of a certain phase of my life. What I'm on the lookout for now is…

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In the writing process, the more the story cooks, the better. The brain works for you even when you are at rest.…

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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…

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It is very enjoyable, writing a story. You get this idea. It takes hold of you. And then you spend day and…

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Women are the cowards they are because they have been semi-slaves for so long. The number of women prepared to stand up…

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I woke up one morning, and I couldn't move my arm. It was the oddest thing, the paralysis. I called up a…

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Do you know what people really want? Everyone, I mean. Everybody in the world is thinking: I wish there was just one…

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I don't think that Women's Liberation will change much though -- not because there is anything wrong with their aims, but because…

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I think people are always looking for gurus. It's the easiest thing in the world to become a guru. It's quite terrifying.…

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A public library is the most democratic thing in the world. What can be found there has undone dictators and tyrants: demagogues…

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This is a time when it is frightening to be alive, when it is hard to think of human beings as rational…

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He destroyed in her the knowing, doubting, sophisticated Ella, and again and again he put her intelligence to sleep, and with her…

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[The Golden Notebook] was not a trumpet for Women's Liberation. It described many female emotions of aggression, hostility, resentment. It put them…

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Because I was permanently confused, dissatisfied, unhappy, tormented by inadequacy, driven by wanting towards every kind of impossible future, the attitude of…

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A foolhardy lot, we accepted it all, as we always do, never asked: "What is going to happen to us now, with…

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Recently, the science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke talked about the ways the lives of human beings will be changed in the…

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I do not think writers or anybody would sit down and think they must write about some cause, or theme, or something.…

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People who love literature have at least part of their minds immune from indoctrination. If you read, you can learn to think…

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I think novelists perform many useful tasks for their fellow citizens, but one of the most valuable is this: to enable us…

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[Some people think] that storytelling is telling jokes. So they have to be discouraged! Then others think that storytelling-is like an encounter…

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They can't give a Nobel to someone who's dead so I think they were probably thinking they had better give it to…

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They can't give a Nobel to someone who's dead so I think they were probably thinking they had better give it to…

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I do not think writers ought ever to sit down and think they must write about some cause, or theme, or something.…

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I don't think San Francisco needs defending. I never meet anyone who doesn't love the place, Americans or others.

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Once I read autobiography as what the writer thought about his or her life. Now I think, 'This is what they thought…

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I've always disliked words like inspiration. Writing is probably like a scientist thinking about some scientific problem, or an engineer about an…

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More by Doris Lessing

Some books are not read in the right way because they have skipped a stage of opinion, assume a crystallization of information in society…

“In the morning, when she wishes me to wake, she crouches on my chest, and pats my face with her paw. Or, if I…

You know, whenever women make imaginary female kingdoms in literature, they are always very permissive, to use the jargon word, and easy and generous…

There is only one real sin and that is to persuade oneself that the second best is anything but second best.

“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…

I remember World War II when there were very few books, very little paper available. For me to walk into a shop or look…

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…

“While she strode rapidly through the ward to the door at the other end, she was able to see that every bed or cot…

I do not think that marriage is one of my talents. I've been much happier unmarried than married.

I haven't got the energy to write now.

What really fascinates me is this need that is so strong now that if you read a work of the imagination you instantly have…

“The charge that the United Nations are using bacteriological warfare in Korea cannot be dismissed merely because it would be insane.”

What I did have, which others perhaps didn't, was a capacity for sticking at it, which really is the point, not the talent at…

The human community is evolving... . We can survive anything you care to mention. We are supremely equipped to survive, to adapt and even…

So love is rest? The cosy corner? The little nook? Sometimes it ought to be. Sometimes it is.