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
dream writing sleep
In the writing process, the more the story cooks, the better. The brain works for you even when you are at rest. I find dreams particularly useful. I myself think a great deal before I go to sleep and the details sometimes unfold in the dream.
dimensions way building
I would not be at all surprised to find out . . . that the dimensions of buildings affect us in ways we don't guess.
kids thinking parent
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.
superstitions worst tolerable
The worst superstition is to consider our own tolerable.
writing different firsts
It's amazing what you find out about yourself when you write in the first person about someone very different from you.
perspective people awful
Anna was saying to herself: why do I always have this awful need to make other people see things as I do? It's childish, why should they? What it amounts to is that I'm scared of being alone in what I feel.
insecure accepting uncertain
One certainty we all accept is the condition of being uncertain and insecure.
thinking people mind
People who love literature have at least part of their minds immune from indoctrination. If you read, you can learn to think for yourself.
birthday time years
The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes, but you don't change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion.
giving interviews spend-time
All I do is give interviews and spend time being photographed.
inspiring mothers-day mother
All my friends' mothers were appalling women.
nobel nobel-prize hospitals
As soon as I got the Nobel Prize my back collapsed and I was in hospital.
blair hated
I always hated Tony Blair, from the beginning.
hate iran evil-government
I hate Iran. I hate the Iranian government. It's a cruel and evil government.