Doris Lessing Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• What is a hero without love for mankind.

  Doris Lessing

  Love, Hero, Mankind

  16 Copy quote

• 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

  New York, White, People

  Interview with Jonah Raskin, progressive.org. June 1999.

  16 Copy quote

• We, as a society, can't tolerate very much difference.

  Doris Lessing

  Differences, Tolerate, Uniqueness

  8 Copy quote

• I am increasingly afflicted by vertigo where words mean nothing

  Doris Lessing

  Mean, Vertigo, Words Mean Nothing

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• A public library is the most democratic thing in the world. What can be found there has undone dictators and tyrants: demagogues can persecute writers and tell them what to write as much as they like, but they cannot vanish what has been written in the past, though they try often enough...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

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  11 Copy quote

• You remember with what you are at the time you are remembering.

  Doris Lessing

  Remember

  4 Copy quote

• Sleep is harder to reach and thinner, and sleeping is no longer the Drop into the black pit all oblivion until the alarm clock, no, sleep is thin and fitful and full of memories and reminders and the dark is never dark enough.

  Doris Lessing

  Memories, Sleep, Dark

  8 Copy quote

• You should write, first of all, to please yourself. You shouldn't care a damn about anybody else at all. But writing can't be a way of life - the important part of writing is living. You have to live in such a way that your writing emerges from it.

  Doris Lessing

  Writing, Important, Care

  Doris May Lessing (1996). “Putting questions differently: interviews with Doris Lessing, 1964-1994”

  9 Copy quote

• All one's life as a young woman one is on show, a focus of attention, people notice you. You set yourself up to being noticed and admired. And then, not expecting it, you become middle-aged and anonymous.

  Doris Lessing

  Women, People, Focus

  "An Uncommon Scold". Book by Abby Adams, 1989.

  10 Copy quote

• A woman writer, quitting love before literature when love lets her down, will put literature before love.

  Doris Lessing

  Women, Love Is, Literature

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• I hate to sound clichéd, but I do see life as a journey. How else can you see it?

  Doris Lessing

  Hate, Journey, Life Journey

  Source: progressive.org

  4 Copy quote

• A writer falls in love with an idea and gets carried away.

  Doris Lessing

  Falling In Love, Fall, Ideas

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• You have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer.

  Doris Lessing

  Giving Up, Creative Writers, Creative Writing

  "Mrs. Lessing Addresses Some of Life's Puzzles". Interview with Herbert Mitgang, archive.nytimes.com. April 22, 1984.

  10 Copy quote

• You only learn to be a better writer by actually writing.

  Doris Lessing

  Writing

  10 Copy quote

• We are all creatures of the stars.

  Doris Lessing

  Stars, Creatures

  Doris Lessing (2012). “Shikasta (Canopus in Argos: Archives Series, Book 1)”, p.66, HarperCollins UK

  4 Copy quote

• If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air.

  Doris Lessing

  Cat, Air, Water

  Doris Lessing (2012). “On Cats”, p.51, HarperCollins UK

  45 Copy quote

• Africa gives you the knowledge that man is a small creature, among other creatures, in a large landscape.

  Doris Lessing

  Men, Giving, Landscape

  Doris Lessing (2014). “African Stories”, p.6, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

• There is only one real sin and that is to persuade oneself that the second best is anything but second best.

  Doris Lessing

  Inspirational, Real, Sin

  The Golden Notebook "Free Women: 5" (1962)

  19 Copy quote

• Novels give you the matrix of emotions, give you the flavour of a time in a way formal history cannot.

  Doris Lessing

  Giving, Way, Emotion

  Doris May Lessing (1994). “The Golden Notebook”, HarperCollins Publishers

  6 Copy quote

• I think I am at the end of a certain phase of my life. What I'm on the lookout for now is the unexpected, for things that come from outside and that I never thought might happen. Sometimes you have to watch for them so you don't automatically say no to the new, simply because you're in the habit of saying no to everything that comes along.

  Doris Lessing

  Thinking, Watches, Phases

  Interview with Jonah Raskin, progressive.org. November 19, 2013.

  5 Copy quote

• What's terrible is to pretend that second-rate is 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

  Love, Inspirational, Needs

  Doris May Lessing (1994). “The Golden Notebook”, HarperCollins Publishers

  44 Copy quote

• We always seem to be surprised by events, especially by catastrophes, but also by wonderful events. Look at 1990, the year that the Soviet Union collapsed and apartheid in South Africa collapsed and the Berlin Wall came down. I don't know anyone who foresaw those events. It seems to me that as a species we are constantly trying to adapt ourselves to the unexpected. In the meantime, we talk as if we are in control, and we're not. This seems to me to be the truth about the twentieth century.

  Doris Lessing

  Wall, Trying, Unexpected

  Source: progressive.org

  7 Copy quote

• The worst superstition is to consider our own tolerable.

  Doris Lessing

  Superstitions, Worst, Tolerable

  7 Copy quote

• Advice to young writers? Always the same advice: learn to trust our own judgment, learn inner independence, learn to trust that time will sort the good from the bad– including your own bad.

  Doris Lessing

  Advice, Independence, Young Writers

  9 Copy quote

• We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known.

  Doris Lessing

  Truth, Stupid, Fighting

  Doris May Lessing (1994). “The Golden Notebook”, HarperCollins Publishers

  14 Copy quote

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