Quotes by Doris Lessing

About Doris Lessing:

Doris May Lessing is Singing (1950), the sequence of five novels collectively called Children of Violence (1952–69), The Golden Notebook (1962), The Good Terrorist (1985), and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos: Archives (1979–1983).
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

I have a daughter and two grand-daughters and a great grandson in Africa, in Cape Town.

Doris Lessing

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

Doris Lessing

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

I hate Iran. I hate the Iranian government. It's a cruel and evil government.

Doris Lessing

Sometimes I think what I write is funny in its quiet way.

Doris Lessing

God knows why nobody ever learns from the preceding generation - but they don't.

Doris Lessing

My father was always so mingled with rage at his life.

Doris Lessing

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

I am always being described as having views that I've never had in my life.

Doris Lessing

I've worked hard all my life. You have to if you want to get things done.

Doris Lessing

That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.

Doris Lessing

In university they don't tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools.

Doris Lessing

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

Doris Lessing

What society doesn't realize is that in the past, ordinary people respected learning. They respected books, and they don't now, or not very much. That whole respect for serious literature and learning has disappeared.

Doris Lessing

Trust no friend without faults, and love a woman, but no angel.

Doris Lessing

What is a hero without love for mankind.

Doris Lessing

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

Doris Lessing

Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.

Doris Lessing

With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one - but no one at all - can tell you what to read and when and how.

Doris Lessing

Borrowing is not much better than begging; just as lending with interest is not much better than stealing.

Doris Lessing

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

Doris Lessing

Author Bio

  • NameDoris Lessing
  • DescriptionBritish novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer
  • BornOctober 22, 1919
  • DiedNovember 17, 2013
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionWriter; Poet; Novelist; Playwright; Autobiographer
  • WorksThe Grass Is Singing; The Golden Notebook; The Good Terrorist; The Cleft
  • AwardsNobel Prize In Literature; Somerset Maugham Award; Austrian State Prize For European Literature; WH Smith Literary Award; Grinzane Cavour Prize; James Tait Black Memorial Prize; David Cohen Prize; Prince Of Asturia Literary Prize