British author (1919-2013)
So love is rest? The cosy corner? The little nook?
Sometimes it ought to be.
Sometimes it is.
DORIS LESSING
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Play with a Tiger
No one's noticed. So much is destroyed, we can't be bothered.
DORIS LESSING
The Paris Review, spring 1988
I think people are always looking for gurus. It's the easiest thing in the world to become a guru. It's quite terrifying. I once saw something fascinating here in New York. It must have been in the early seventies--guru time. A man used to go and sit in Central Park, wearing elaborate golden robes. He never once opened his mouth, he just sat. He'd appear at lunchtime. People appeared from everywhere, because he was obviously a holy man, and this went on for months. They just sat around him in reverent silence. Eventually he got fed up with it and left. Yes. It's as easy as that.
DORIS LESSING
The Paris Review, spring 1988
Laughter is by definition healthy.
DORIS LESSING
The Summer Before Dark
What he, the writer, is asking is impossible. Why should he expect this extraordinary being, the perfect critic (who does occasionally exist), why should there be anyone else who comprehends what he is trying to do? After all, there is only one person spinning that particular cocoon, only one person whose business it is to spin it.
DORIS LESSING
Partisan Review, 1973
Some books are not read in the right way because they have skipped a stage of opinion, assume a crystallization of information in society which has not yet taken place.
DORIS LESSING
Partisan Review, 1973
You know, it never occurred to me until afterwards that everybody in these books is a refugee. But everyone is running from drought or flood or civil war. I do think a lot about them. You know, not far from here is a road where refugees of all kinds line the roads, and people go there to pick up a plumber or carpenter or something. This isn't an official thing, you know, but there they are. A friend of mine goes there when she wants anything. They are all very skilled people.
DORIS LESSING
interview, The San Francisco Chronicle, January 15, 2006
It can be considered a rule that the probable duration of an Empire may be prognosticated by the degree to which its rulers believe in their own propaganda.
DORIS LESSING
The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire
There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be.
DORIS LESSING
attributed, Writers on Writing
[The Golden Notebook] was not a trumpet for Women's Liberation. It described many female emotions of aggression, hostility, resentment. It put them into print. Apparently what many women were thinking, feeling, experiencing, came as a great surprise. Instantly a lot of very ancient weapons were unleashed, the main ones, as usual, being on the theme of "She is unfeminine", "She is a man-hater".
DORIS LESSING
Partisan Review, 1973
Women have an extraordinary ability to withdraw from the sexual relationship, to immunize themselves against it, in such a way that their men can be left feeling let down and insulted without having anything tangible to complain of.
DORIS LESSING
The Grass is Singing
People who love literature have at least part of their minds immune from indoctrination. If you read, you can learn to think for yourself.
DORIS LESSING
attributed, Grammar Girl's 101 Words Every High School Graduate Needs to Know
Every child has the capacity to be everything.
DORIS LESSING
Shikasta
Men are unwise and curiously planned.
DORIS LESSING
The Cleft: A Novel
It is terrible to destroy a person's picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction.
DORIS LESSING
The Grass Is Singing
Novels give you the matrix of emotions, give you the flavour of a time in a way formal history cannot.
DORIS LESSING
Time Bites
I was in New York when Clinton was elected the first time, and everyone I knew was in a state of mad euphoria. I wondered what had happened to my hard-headed friends? Almost everyone I knew was drunk on this great white hope. The next time I was in New York, no one had a good word to say about Clinton, but everyone was in love with Hillary. She was the last word. It's all so unreal. Of course, it's no different in England. Here everyone was besotted with Tony Blair. He was a new face. Do people never learn?
DORIS LESSING
interview, The Progressive, June 1999
Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.
DORIS LESSING
attributed, Wisdom for the Soul
Wisdom is better than weapons of war;
but one sinner destroyeth much good.
DORIS LESSING
Ecclesiastes or, The Preacher
If what we think now is different from what we thought then, we can take it for granted that what we think in a year will be different again.
DORIS LESSING
Shikasta