Doris Lessing
Doris Lessing
Doris May Lessing CHwas a British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer. Her novels include The Grass is Singing, the sequence of five novels collectively called Children of Violence, The Golden Notebook, The Good Terrorist, and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos: Archives...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth22 October 1919
men giving landscape
Africa gives you the knowledge that man is a small creature, among other creatures, in a large landscape.
inspirational real sin
There is only one real sin and that is to persuade oneself that the second best is anything but second best.
drama taken eye
You are taken, shaken, by moments when the improbability of our lives comes over you like a fever. Everything is remarkable, people, living, events present themselves to you with the immediacy of players in some barbarous and splendid drama that it seems we are part of. You have been given new eyes.
memories women
Women often get dropped from memory, and then history.
block mean essence
I'm going to make the obvious point that maybe the word neurotic means the condition of being highly conscious and developed. The essence of neurosis is conflict. But the essence of living now, fully, not blocking off to what goes on, is conflict. 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.
cat air water
If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air.
wiser-you wiser
As you get older, you don't get wiser. You get irritable.
love inspirational firsts
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.
women people focus
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.
men culture shocked
I find myself increasingly shocked at the unthinking and automatic rubbishing of men which is now so part of our culture that it is hardly even noticed.
truth stupid fighting
We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known.
dream hurt phoenix
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.
thinking indoctrination think-for-yourself
If you read, you can learn to think for yourself.
education learning understanding
That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.