September 11 was terrible but, if one goes back over the history of the IRA, what happened to the Americans wasn't that terrible. -Doris Lessing History
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. -Doris Lessing Age
It's amazing what you find out about yourself when you write in the first person about someone very different from you. -Doris Lessing Amazing
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 Learning
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. -Doris Lessing Change
Man, who is he? Too bad, to be the work of God: Too good for the work of chance! -Doris Lessing Chance
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 Respect
That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way. -Doris Lessing Learning
Humanity's legacy of stories and storytelling is the most precious we have. All wisdom is in our stories and songs. A story is how we construct our experiences. At the very simplest, it can be: 'He/she was born, lived, died.' Probably that is the template of our stories - a beginning, middle, and end. This structure is in our minds. -Doris Lessing Wisdom
What really fascinates me is this need that is so strong now that if you read a work of the imagination you instantly have to say, 'Oh, what this really is is so-and-so,' reducing it to a simple formula. -Doris Lessing Imagination
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 Travel
There is only one real sin and that is to persuade oneself that the second best is anything but second best. -Doris Lessing Best
I do not think that marriage is one of my talents. I've been much happier unmarried than married. -Doris Lessing Marriage
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 Society
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. -Doris Lessing Science
There's an unconscious bias in our society: girls are wonderful; boys are terrible. And to be a boy, or young man, growing up, having to listen to all this, it must be painful. -Doris Lessing Society
For the last third of life there remains only work. It alone is always stimulating, rejuvenating, exciting and satisfying. -Doris Lessing Alone
When you're young you think that you're going to sail into a lovely lake of quietude and peace. This is profoundly untrue. -Doris Lessing Peace
