Argument does not teach children or the immature. Only time and experience does that. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“This is because Marxism looks at things as a whole and in relation to each other—or tries to, but its limitations are… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“But you know how it is—it’s always that moment, when a man looks all wounded in his masculinity, one can’t bear it,… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I have kept diaries, of course, but they can't be read for quite a long time. I'm always curious about people who… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“You have to read a book at the right time for you, and I am sure this cannot be insisted on too… — 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
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
There was a time when young people respected learning and literature and now they don't. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“My sense of urgency is very simple,' said the professor, 'I've remembered that much. It's because what I have to remember has… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“For no one knows what lies under the sands of the world's great deserts. No one knows how many times poor Earth… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
What they [critics of Lessing's switch to science fiction] didn't realize was that in science fiction is some of the best social… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“There are people in the world all the time who know" the professor said. "But they keep quiet. They just move about… — 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
“Nevertheless two men good-humouredly greeted her, and both times she froze into nervous annoyance, and walked on with hastening steps. She got… — 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
Advice to young writers? Always the same advice: learn to trust our own judgment, learn inner independence, learn to trust that time… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
What society doesn't realize is that in the past, ordinary people respected learning. They respected books, and they don't now, or not… — 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
“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
“As in the political sphere, the child is taught that he is free, a democrat, with a free will and a free… — 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
It was all wrong, ugly, unhappy and coloured with cynicism, but nothing was tragic, there were no moments that could change anything… — 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