“they seem unable to retain this very simple truth for long, although they have been told again and again, and this is… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I have to conclude that fiction is better at 'the truth' than a factual record, — 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
“We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
The first casualty in any war is the truth. In World War II, I was part of a group of people who… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“themselves to remember the truth, and not the sentimentalities with which we all shield ourselves from the horrors of which we are… — 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
It is terrible to destroy a person's picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
Very few people really care about freedom, about liberty, about the truth, very few. Very few people have guts, the kind of… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“The boulder is the truth that the great men know by instinct, and the mountain is the stupidity of mankind.” — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“Also, the rules of this particular game demanded that it was not enough to say: “So and so disagrees with us, who… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“The truth was, she was becoming more and more uncomfortably conscious not only that the things she said, and a good many… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
At no time, anywhere, was the population of a country told the truth: facts about events trickled into general consciousness much later,… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
In times of war, as everyone knows, who has lived through one, or talked to soldiers when they are allowing themselves 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
