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
capable english-writer love pretend quite terrible work
What's terrible is to pretend that the second-rate is first-rate, that you don't need love when you do or that you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.
women love-is literature
A woman writer, quitting love before literature when love lets her down, will put literature before love.
falling-in-love fall ideas
A writer falls in love with an idea and gets carried away.
thinking lakes lovely
When you're young you think that you're going to sail into a lovely lake of quietude and peace. This is profoundly untrue.
love-is littles sometimes
So love is rest? The cosy corner? The little nook? Sometimes it ought to be. Sometimes it is.
art sex love-is
People don't mind immoral messages. They don't mind art which says that murder is good, cruelty is good, sex for sex's sake is good. They like it, provided the message is wrapped up a little. And they like messages saying that murder is bad, cruelty is bad, and love is love is love is love. What they can't stand is to be told it all doesn't matter, they can't stand formlessness.
love trust angel
Trust no friend without faults, and love a woman, but no angel.
winning giving lovely
It's lovely to have money to give away - that's the bonus of winning the Nobel.
love hero mankind
What is a hero without love for mankind.
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.
oneself persuade sin
There is only one real sin, and that is to persuade oneself that the second-best is anything but the second-best
education novels sorry threw wrote
I was writing all my childhood. And I wrote two novels when I was 17, which were terrible. And I'm not sorry I threw them out. So, I wrote. I had to write. You know, the thing was, I had no education.
dictates fiction form problem science
I see every book as a problem that you have to solve. That is what dictates the form you use. It's not that you say, 'I want to write a science fiction book.' You start from the other end, and what you have to say dictates the form of it.
children dozen married second war wicked
I got married and I had children because of the Second World War, as all of us did, exclaiming, 'Oh, no, we are never going to bring a child into this wicked world,' but we had children by the dozen and got married.