Doris Lessing Quotes - Page 13

Quotes about:

• People who have lived through a war know that as it approaches, an at first secret, unacknowledged, elation begins, as if an almost inaudible drum is beating ... an awful, illicit, violent excitement is abroad. Then the elation becomes too strong to be ignored or overlooked: then everyone is possessed by it.

  Doris Lessing

  Strong, War, People

  Doris Lessing (2013). “Prisons We Choose to Live Inside”, p.10, Harper Collins

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• It was all wrong, ugly, unhappy and coloured with cynicism, but nothing was tragic, there were no moments that could change anything or anybody. From time to time the emotional lightning flashed and showed a landscape of private misery, and then — we went on dancing.

  Doris Lessing

  Emotional, Dancing, Unhappy

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

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• Perhaps it is not such a bad marriage after all? There are innumerable marriages where two people, both twisted and wrong in their depths, are well matched, making each other miserable in the way they need, in the way the pattern of their life demands.

  Doris Lessing

  Two, People, Depth

  Doris Lessing (1973). “The Grass is Singing”, p.67, Heinemann

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• The words of a wise man's mouth are gracious; but the lips of a fool will swallow up himself.

  Doris Lessing

  Wise, Men, Mouths

  Doris Lessing (1999). “Ecclesiastes or, The Preacher”, p.34, Canongate Books

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• In the writing process, the more a story cooks, the better.

  Doris Lessing

  Writing, Stories, Process

  "Routine inquiries: what goes into a writing 'process'?" by Jean Hannah Edelstein, www.theguardian.com. November 11, 2008.

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• The novel has become a function of the fragmented society, the fragmented consciousness. Human beings are so divided, are becoming more and more divided, and more subdivided in themselves, reflecting the world, that they reach out desperately, not knowing they do it, for information about other groups inside their own country, let alone about groups in other countries. It is a blind grasping out for their own wholeness, and the novel-report is a means toward it.

  Doris Lessing

  Country, Mean, Knowing

  "The Golden Notebook (Free Women: 1)". Book by Doris Lessing, 1962.

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• The point is, that the function of the novel seems to be changing; it has become an outpost of journalism; we read novels for information about areas of life we don't know - Nigeria, South Africa, the American army, a coal-mining village, coteries in Chelsea, etc. We read to find out what is going on. 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

  Philosophy, Army, Should Have

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

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• What they [critics of Lessing's switch to science fiction] didn't realize was that in science fiction is some of the best social fiction of our time.

  Doris Lessing

  Fiction, Realizing, Social

  "Doris Lessing: Hot Dawns". Interview with Harvey Blume, Boston Book Review, February 1998.

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• In fact I've reached the stage where I look at people and say - he or she, they are whole at all because they've chosen to block off at this stage or that. People stay sane by blocking off, by limiting themselves.

  Doris Lessing

  Block, People, Looks

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

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• I never thought of London in terms of possible heroes - of course, there are thousands. It's a very talented city.

  Doris Lessing

  Hero, Cities, London

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• Nonsense, it was all nonsense: this whole damned outfit, with its committees, its conferences, its eternal talk, talk, talk, was a great con trick; it was a mechanism to earn a few hundred men and women incredible sums of money.

  Doris Lessing

  Men, Incredibles, Nonsense

  "The Summer Before the Dark". Book by Doris Lessing, 1973.

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• The most exciting periods of literature have always been those when the critics were great.

  Doris Lessing

  Literature, Periods, Exciting

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• The old watch the young with anguish, pain, fear. Above all what each has learned is what things cost, what has to be paid.

  Doris Lessing

  Pain, Watches, Cost

  Doris May Lessing (1992). “Canopus in Argos: Archives”

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• The Nobel Prize is run by a self-perpetuated committee. They vote for themselves and get the world's publishing industry to jump to their tune.

  Doris Lessing

  Running, Self, Tunes

  "In their own words: literary giants who died this year" by Jess Sutcliffe, www.theguardian.com. December 28, 2013.

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• I've won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one. I'm delighted to win them all, the whole lot.

  Doris Lessing

  Winning, Europe, Bloody

  "Doris Lessing wins Nobel prize" by Sarah Crown, www.theguardian.com. October 11, 2007.

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• 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 all. You have to stick at it.

  Doris Lessing

  Sticks, Talent, Capacity

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• 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

  Color, People, Political

  Doris May Lessing (1968). “Going home”

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• I think kids ought to travel. I think it's very good to carry kids around. It's good for them. Of course it's tough on the parents.

  Doris Lessing

  Kids, Thinking, Parent

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• The storyteller is deep inside everyone of us. The story-maker is always with us. Let us suppose our world is attacked by war, by the horrors that we all of us easily imagine. Let us suppose floods wash through our cities, the seas rise . . . but the storyteller will be there, for it is our imaginations which shape us, keep us, create us - for good and for ill. It is our stories that will recreate us, when we are torn, hurt, even destroyed. It is the storyteller, the dream-maker, the myth-maker, that is our phoenix, that represents us at our best, and at our most creative.

  Doris Lessing

  Dream, Hurt, War

  "A hunger for books" by Doris Lessing, www.theguardian.com. December 8, 2007.

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• Writers do not come out of houses without books.

  Doris Lessing

  Book, Reading, House

  "A Hunger for Books" by Doris Lessing, www.theguardian.com. December 08, 2007.

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• On the news two dozen events of fantastically different importance are announced in exactly the same tone of voice. The voice doesn't discriminate between a divorce, a horse race, a war in the Middle East.

  Doris Lessing

  Horse, War, Divorce

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• It is quite easy to remark the absurdities and contradictions of a country's social system from outside its borders, but very difficult if one has been brought up in it.

  Doris Lessing

  Country, Borders, Easy

  Doris May Lessing (1991). “Martha Quest”, Plume

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• Writers, and particularly female writers, have to fight for the conditions they need to work.

  Doris Lessing

  Fighting, Female Writers, Needs

  "Killing Her Softly" by Joseph O'Neil, www.theatlantic.com. September 2010.

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• 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

  Real, Women, Silly

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• ...She thinks, for the hundredth time, that in their emotional life all these intelligent men use a level so much lower than anything they use for work, that they might be different creatures.

  Doris Lessing

  Intelligent, Men, Emotional

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

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