Doris Lessing Quotes

The critics slap labels on you and then expect you to talk inside their terms.
Doris Lessing

Talk, Expect, Inside

The human race has been telling stories since it began.
Doris Lessing

Human, Since, Race

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

Vote, Themselves, Run

The thing is, I haven't changed at all.
Doris Lessing

There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be.
Doris Lessing

Nor, Laws, Novel

There is nothing more boring for an intelligent woman than to spend endless amounts of time with small children.
Doris Lessing

Time, Children, Woman

There was a time when young people respected learning and literature and now they don't.
Doris Lessing

Time, Learning, Young

There's always this sense of incredulity that writers feel, because they're usually living flat and ordinary lives, because they have to.
Doris Lessing

Living, Sense, Lives

They can't give a Nobel to someone who's dead so I think they were probably thinking they had better give it to me now before I popped off.
Doris Lessing

Someone, Thinking, Give

Things are not quite so simple always as black and white.
Doris Lessing

Simple, Black, Quite

Time and distance from the first and second world wars doesn't seem to lessen their horrors.
Doris Lessing

Time, Second, Seem

We like to think we can solve everything, but we can't always.
Doris Lessing

What the feminists want of me is something they haven't examined because it comes from religion. They want me to bear witness.
Doris Lessing

Religion, Bear, Witness

When there's a war, people get married.
Doris Lessing

When young I did my best to undo that bit of the British Empire I found myself in: that is, old Southern Rhodesia.
Doris Lessing

Best, Young, Old

Whenever I met anyone who knew anything, I would bore them stiff until they told me what they knew.
Doris Lessing

Until, Anyone, Knew

You can't be a Red if you're married to a civil servant.
Doris Lessing

Married, Red, Servant

You cannot escape the fact that women mould your first five years, whether you like it or not. And I can't say I do like it very much.
Doris Lessing

Women, Cannot, Fact

You know, looking at it objectively, I've written one or two good books.
Doris Lessing

Good, Two, Looking

I do not think writers ought ever to sit down and think they must write about some cause, or theme, or something. If they write about their own experiences, something true is going to emerge.
Doris Lessing

True, Down, Write

There's an unconscious bias in our society: girls are wonderful; boys are terrible. And to be a boy, or young man, growing up, having to listen to all this, it must be painful.
Doris Lessing

Society, Young, Wonderful

When I started, there were no big interviews, no television, no profiles and all that. The publishers were quite shockingly uncommercial, but they did look after their writers.
Doris Lessing

After, Big, Started

I don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach, one, that writing is hard work, and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer.
Doris Lessing

Life, Work, Great

This world is run by people who know how to do things. They know how things work. They are equipped. Up there, there's a layer of people who run everything. But we - we're just peasants. We don't understand what's going on, and we can't do anything.
Doris Lessing

Work, Understand, Run

What I really can't stand about the feminist revolution is that it produced some of the smuggest, most unselfcritical people the world has ever seen. They are horrible.
Doris Lessing

Revolution, Stand, Seen

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Biography

Nationality: English

Type: Writer

Born: October 22, 1919

Links

Find on Amazon: Doris Lessing

Cite this Page: Citation

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