Doris Lessing quotes - page 5

I do not think that marriage is one of my talents. I've been much happier unmarried than married. (Doris Lessing)
My mother was a woman who was very frustrated. She had a great deal of ability, and all this energy went into me and my brother. View quote
Doris Lessing
I never thought of London in terms of possible heroes - of course, there are thousands. It's a very talented city. View quote
Doris Lessing
I have a daughter and two grand-daughters and a great grandson in Africa, in Cape Town. View quote
Doris Lessing
There's always this sense of incredulity that writers feel, because they're usually living flat and ordinary lives, because they have to. View quote
Doris Lessing
The automatic reaction of practically any young person is, at once, against authority. That, I think, began in the First World War because of the trenches, and the incompetence of the people on all fronts. View quote
Doris Lessing
As soon as I got the Nobel Prize my back collapsed and I was in hospital. View quote
Doris Lessing
Men are restless, adventurous. Women are conservative - despite what current ideology says. View quote
Doris Lessing
I've won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one. I'm delighted to win them all, the whole lot. View quote
Doris Lessing
A woman without a man cannot meet a man, any man, of any age, without thinking, even if it's for a half-second, 'Perhaps this is THE man. View quote
Doris Lessing
When I became political and Communist, it was because they were the only people I had ever met who fought the color bar in their lives. (Doris Lessing)
Loneliness, she thought, was craving for other people's company. But she did not know that loneliness can be an unnoticed cramping of the spirit for lack of companionship. View quote
Doris Lessing
Free women," said Anna, wryly. She added, with an anger new to Molly, so that she earned another quick scrutinizing glance from her friend: "They still define us in terms of relationships with men, even the best of them. View quote
Doris Lessing
It usually takes me a year to do a book. A year or eighteen months. View quote
Doris Lessing
Anna, there's something very arrogant about insisting on the right to be right. View quote
Doris Lessing
Humanity's legacy of stories and storytelling is the most precious we have. All wisdom is in our stories and songs. A story is how we construct our experiences. At the very simplest, it can be: 'He/she was born, lived, died.' Probably that is the template of our stories - a beginning, middle, and end. This structure is in our minds. View quote
Doris Lessing
You want me to begin a novel with The two women were alone in the London flat? View quote
Doris Lessing
It isn't only the terror everywhere, and the fear of being conscious of it, that freezes people. It's more than that. People know they are in a society dead or dying. View quote
Doris Lessing
As you get older, you don't get wiser. You get irritable. View quote
Doris Lessing
I'm always astounded at the way we automatically look at what divides and separates us. We never look at what people have in common. View quote
Doris Lessing
Don't read a book out of its right time for you. (Doris Lessing)
You can only learn to be a better writer by actually writing. View quote
Doris Lessing
Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty-and vise versa. Don't read a book out of its right time for you. View quote
Doris Lessing
You simply don't get to be wise, mature, etc., unless you've been a raving cannibal for thirty years or so. View quote
Doris Lessing
I don't know why I still find it so hard to accept that words are faulty and by their very nature innacurate. View quote
Doris Lessing