British author (1919-2013)
You know, it never occurred to me until afterwards that everybody in these books is a refugee. But everyone is running from drought or flood or civil war. I do think a lot about them. You know, not far from here is a road where refugees of all kinds line the roads, and people go there to pick up a plumber or carpenter or something. This isn't an official thing, you know, but there they are. A friend of mine goes there when she wants anything. They are all very skilled people.
DORIS LESSING
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interview, The San Francisco Chronicle, January 15, 2006
When I was starting out, science fiction was a little genre over there, which only a few people read. But now -- where are you going to put, for example, Salman Rushdie? Or any of the South American writers? Most people get by calling them magical realists.
DORIS LESSING
interview, The San Francisco Chronicle, January 15, 2006
The words of a wise man's mouth are gracious;
but the lips of a fool will swallow up himself.
DORIS LESSING
Ecclesiastes or, The Preacher
Laughter is by definition healthy.
DORIS LESSING
The Summer Before Dark
I lived in a brilliantly lit haze, shifting and flickering according to my changing desires. Of course, that is only a description of being young.
DORIS LESSING
The Golden Notebook
You and I are the boulder-pushers. All our lives, you and I, we'll put all our energies, all our talents into pushing a great boulder up a mountain. The boulder is the truth that the great men know by instinct, and the mountain is the stupidity of mankind.
DORIS LESSING
The Golden Notebook
What's terrible is to pretend that the second-rate is the first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.
DORIS LESSING
The Golden Notebook
Often the mass emotions are those which seem the noblest, best and most beautiful. And yet, inside a year, five years, a decade, five decades, people will be asking, "How could you have believed that?" because events will have taken place that will have banished the said mass emotions to the dustbin of history.
DORIS LESSING
Prisons We Choose to Live Inside
Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.
DORIS LESSING
attributed, Wisdom for the Soul
What he, the writer, is asking is impossible. Why should he expect this extraordinary being, the perfect critic (who does occasionally exist), why should there be anyone else who comprehends what he is trying to do? After all, there is only one person spinning that particular cocoon, only one person whose business it is to spin it.
DORIS LESSING
Partisan Review, 1973
Some books are not read in the right way because they have skipped a stage of opinion, assume a crystallization of information in society which has not yet taken place.
DORIS LESSING
Partisan Review, 1973
It is terrible to destroy a person's picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction.
DORIS LESSING
The Grass Is Singing
Wisdom is better than weapons of war;
but one sinner destroyeth much good.
DORIS LESSING
Ecclesiastes or, The Preacher
There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be.
DORIS LESSING
attributed, Writers on Writing
People who love literature have at least part of their minds immune from indoctrination. If you read, you can learn to think for yourself.
DORIS LESSING
attributed, Grammar Girl's 101 Words Every High School Graduate Needs to Know
Men are unwise and curiously planned.
DORIS LESSING
The Cleft: A Novel
Novels give you the matrix of emotions, give you the flavour of a time in a way formal history cannot.
DORIS LESSING
Time Bites
I was in New York when Clinton was elected the first time, and everyone I knew was in a state of mad euphoria. I wondered what had happened to my hard-headed friends? Almost everyone I knew was drunk on this great white hope. The next time I was in New York, no one had a good word to say about Clinton, but everyone was in love with Hillary. She was the last word. It's all so unreal. Of course, it's no different in England. Here everyone was besotted with Tony Blair. He was a new face. Do people never learn?
DORIS LESSING
interview, The Progressive, June 1999
Every child has the capacity to be everything.
DORIS LESSING
Shikasta
If what we think now is different from what we thought then, we can take it for granted that what we think in a year will be different again.
DORIS LESSING
Shikasta