Doris Lessing Quotes
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.
Quotes to Explore
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Neither science, nor the politics in power, nor the mass media, nor business, nor the law nor even the military are in a position to define or control risks rationally.
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I think that every so-called history book and film biography should be prefaced by the statement that what follows is the author's rendition of events and circumstances.
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I've been quite fascinated by the relative insignificance of human existence, the shortness of life. We might as well be a letter in a word in a sentence on a page in a book in a library in a city in one country in this enormous universe! And that kind of fear and insignificance has kept me awake at night.
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A science is something which is constructed from truth on workable axioms. There are 55 axioms in scientology which are very demonstrably true, and on these can be constructed a great deal.
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I read whenever possible, and I buy books all the time, sometimes online, but mostly from bookshops. I love literature. If you want to understand art, it's important to understand what is also happening in literature, in music, in science, in architecture.
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A book is a gift you can open again and again.
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I know from an editor's point of view or a publisher's point of view it's easier to slot me into a particular niche. But I know that I'd be bored unless I wrote a book that in some senses was a challenge.
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Learn about the world, the way it works, any kind of science and anthropology, it's really an interesting place we live in. Evolution is a really fantastic idea, even more than the idea of God I think.
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'Holes' was my favorite book ever. So you know when you love a book and you hear it's being made into a movie and it makes you a little annoyed at first? But I would've loved to play the Shia LaBeouf role in that movie when I was younger. I just wanted to be the rebellious kid on the old digging camp.
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When I read about genetics, I see breakthroughs every day. And while I'm trying to learn more about behavioral science, I must say that I don't feel I get tremendous intellectual stimulation from most of the things I read.
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My method is, I just sit down and write a book.
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I have considered rap music stars, and there is one in my new book, Lovers and Players, and there is also a hip-hop music mogul who I think you will like a lot.
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In every other science fiction series, humans are at the top of the food chain. In the 'Babylon 5' universe, they're in the bottom third.
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When I finished graduate school, I had a master's of fine arts from a prestigious institution, a manuscript that would eventually become my first published book - and almost no marketable skills.
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When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me.
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Science fiction is trying to find alternative ways of looking at realities.
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It's certainly no coincidence that big bands became the entertainment of the army in WWI and WWII, and that jazz drumming style is very military influenced. The snare drum comes from the military and becomes the core kind of sound of jazz drums.
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I lived for four years in the 1930s with these individuals and the only time that I wasn't thinking about dealing with physical suffering is when I was working on this book. I've never been more alive as when I worked on this book.
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You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend.
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A large and growing body of academic research suggests there are market anomalies that can be exploited to beat a strict index approach. Some of that research has been recognized with Nobels in economic science - William F. Sharpe in 1990 and Eugene F. Fama in 2013.
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If the [Vestiges] be true, the labours of sober induction are in vain; religion is a lie; human law is a mass of folly, and a base injustice; morality is moonshine; our labours for the black people of Africa were works of madmen; and man and woman are only better beasts!
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I don't have big security guards. I don't have an entourage.
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I don't believe the American people will uphold any political party that puts political exploitation above national interest. Surely we Republicans aren't that desperate for victory. I don't want to see the Republican party win that way. While it might be a fleeting victory for the Republican Party, it would be a more lasting defeat for the American people.
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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.
