There was a time when young people respected learning and literature and now they don't. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
Advice to young writers? Always the same advice: learn to trust our own judgment. — 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
After a certain age - and for some of us that can be very young - there are no new people, beasts,… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
There's an unconscious bias in our society: girls are wonderful; boys are terrible. And to be a boy, or young man, growing… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
The old watch the young with anguish, pain, fear. Above all what each has learned is what things cost, what has to… — 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
When young I did my best to undo that bit of the British Empire I found myself in: that is, old Southern… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I lived in a brilliantly lit haze, shifting and flickering according to my changing desires. Of course, that is only a description… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
She was thirty-nine. No, she did not envy her eighteen-year- old self at all. But she did envy, envied every day more… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
All one's life as a young woman one is on show, a focus of attention, people notice you. You set yourself up… — 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
“But there is no doubt that to attempt a novel of ideas is to give oneself a handicap: the parochialism of our… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
Because I was permanently confused, dissatisfied, unhappy, tormented by inadequacy, driven by wanting towards every kind of impossible future, the attitude of… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I'm always astounded at the way we automatically look at what divides and separates us. We never look at what people have… — 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
“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
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
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
“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
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
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
“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
I do not think that marriage is one of my talents. I've been much happier unmarried than married. — Doris Lessing Copy Share
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
“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
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… — Doris Lessing Copy Share
The human community is evolving... . We can survive anything you care to mention. We are supremely equipped to survive, to adapt and even… — Doris Lessing Copy Share
So love is rest? The cosy corner? The little nook? Sometimes it ought to be. Sometimes it is. — Doris Lessing Copy Share
