British author (1919-2013)
Women are slaves to their beauty.
DORIS LESSING
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Shikasta
One novel in five hundred or a thousand has the quality a novel should have to make it a novel -- the quality of philosophy.
DORIS LESSING
The Golden Notebook
All things come alike to all;
there is one event to the righteous,
and to the wicked;
to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean;
to him that sacrificeth,
and to him that sacrificeth not.
DORIS LESSING
Ecclesiastes or, The Preacher
I don't think that Women's Liberation will change much though -- not because there is anything wrong with their aims, but because it is already clear that the whole world is being shaken into a new pattern by the cataclysms we are living through: probably by the time we are through, if we do get through at all, the aims of Women's Liberation will look very small and quaint.
DORIS LESSING
Partisan Review, 1973
At no time, anywhere, was the population of a country told the truth: facts about events trickled into general consciousness much later, if ever.
DORIS LESSING
Shikasta
Women's emotions are still fitted for a kind of society that no longer exists. My deep emotions, my real ones, are to do with my relationship with a man. One man. But I don't live that kind of life, and I know few women who do. So what I feel is irrelevant and silly.
DORIS LESSING
The Golden Notebook
Very few people really care about freedom, about liberty, about the truth, very few. Very few people have guts, the kind of guts on which a real democracy has to depend. Without people with that sort of guts a free society dies or cannot be born.
DORIS LESSING
The Golden Notebook
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
interview, The Progressive, June 1999
Oh Christ. I couldn't care less.... I can't say I'm overwhelmed with surprise. I'm 88 years old and they can't give the Nobel to someone who's dead, so I think they were probably thinking they'd probably better give it to me now before I've popped off.
DORIS LESSING
"Doris Lessing oldest to win literature Nobel", The Toronto Star, October 12, 2007
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
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
There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be.
DORIS LESSING
attributed, Writers on Writing
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
So love is rest? The cosy corner? The little nook?
Sometimes it ought to be.
Sometimes it is.
DORIS LESSING
Play with a Tiger
I think novelists perform many useful tasks for their fellow citizens, but one of the most valuable is this: to enable us to see ourselves as others see us.
DORIS LESSING
Prisons We Choose to Live Inside
Do you know what people really want? Everyone, I mean. Everybody in the world is thinking: I wish there was just one other person I could really talk to, who could really understand me, who'd be kind to me. That's what people really want, if they're telling the truth.
DORIS LESSING
The Golden Notebook
Sometimes I pick up a book and I say: Well, so you've written it first, have you? Good for you. O.K., then I won't have to write it.
DORIS LESSING
The Golden Notebook
I think people are always looking for gurus. It's the easiest thing in the world to become a guru. It's quite terrifying. I once saw something fascinating here in New York. It must have been in the early seventies--guru time. A man used to go and sit in Central Park, wearing elaborate golden robes. He never once opened his mouth, he just sat. He'd appear at lunchtime. People appeared from everywhere, because he was obviously a holy man, and this went on for months. They just sat around him in reverent silence. Eventually he got fed up with it and left. Yes. It's as easy as that.
DORIS LESSING
The Paris Review, spring 1988
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
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
interview, The San Francisco Chronicle, January 15, 2006