Doris Lessing Quotes
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Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.
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Pearls mean tears.
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It is very enjoyable, writing a story. You get this idea. It takes hold of you. And then you spend day and night thinking about how to do it. And then you do it. And much later, you think, 'Oh, yes. That's an interesting question.'
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Everything all the time in a city is extraordinary!
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Parents should leave books lying around marked 'forbidden' if they want their children to read.
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What is a hero without love for mankind.
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When I was bringing up a child, I taught myself to write in very short, concentrated bursts. If I had a weekend, or a week, I'd do unbelievable amounts of work.
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With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one - but no one at all - can tell you what to read and when and how.
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Space or science fiction has become a dialect for our time.
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I think a lot of romanticizing has gone on with the women's movement.
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I wanted to highlight that whole dreadful process in book publishing that 'nothing succeeds like success.'
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I always hated Tony Blair, from the beginning.
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As soon as I got the Nobel Prize my back collapsed and I was in hospital.
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Borrowing is not much better than begging; just as lending with interest is not much better than stealing.
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I'm just a story teller.
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Time and distance from the first and second world wars doesn't seem to lessen their horrors.
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You should write, first of all, to please yourself. You shouldn't care a damn about anybody else at all. But writing can't be a way of life; the important part of writing is living. You have to live in such a way that your writing emerges from it.
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When young I did my best to undo that bit of the British Empire I found myself in: that is, old Southern Rhodesia.
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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.
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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.
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I'll be pleased when I'm dead. That will let me off worrying about all these wars.
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Small things amuse small minds.
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I do not think that marriage is one of my talents. I've been much happier unmarried than married.
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I have a daughter and two grand-daughters and a great grandson in Africa, in Cape Town.