Doris Lessing Quotes

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

• She
• Wisdom
• Beginning
• Humanity
• Legacy

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• I try and take the commonplace - and some of it is writ large, like death - take the commonplace and make it universally resonant, revelatory, and beautiful at the same time.

  

  Sally Mann
  • Time
  • Death
  • Beautiful

• Africa is poor because its investors and its creditors are unspeakably rich.

  

  Naomi Klein
  • Rich
  • Poor
  • Africa

• Yeah, I'd like to get the girl and at least make it through the film.

  

  Aaron Eckhart
  • Girl
  • Like
  • Film

• I learn something not because I have to, but because I really want to. That's the same view I have for performing. I'm performing because I really want to, not because I have to bring bread back home.

  

  Yo-Yo Ma
  • Home
  • Learn
  • Same

• When the word 'morality' comes up in connection with economics, income distribution and financial stability are usually the issues. Is it moral for rich countries to use such a high proportion of the world's resources or for investment bankers to earn large bonuses?

  

  Edmund Phelps
  • Up
  • World
  • High

• In a way, Jersey really supports rock, maybe more than New York City and Long Island. I know plenty of bands that tour and do much better at Starland or other clubs in New Jersey than others in the tri-state area.

  

  Eddie Trunk
  • Long
  • City
  • Rock

• Cinema and the arts invite viewers to focus on a story and, in doing so, peel away its layers and peer into the depths of the human soul.

  

  Forest Whitaker
  • Soul
  • Focus
  • Cinema

• You have to respect your audience. Without them, you're essentially standing alone, singing to yourself.

  

  K. D. Lang
  • Respect
  • Alone
  • Singing

• With a film, you just don't have time to build sympathy for the character. But I think we're moving away from that in TV. With TV, you have a little more leeway to allow them to rise and fall and rise again and be much more complicated beings.

  

  Rachel McAdams
  • Time
  • Character
  • Fall

• Let's just say, if I weren't a model, I'd be a walking collage. I see my body as a blank canvas that's aching to be decorated; I find it all very fascinating.

  

  Abbey Lee Kershaw
  • Body
  • Model
  • Walking

• I see no conflict whatsoever between Christianity and good business practices. People say you can't mix business with religion. I say there's no other way.

  

  S. Truett Cathy
  • People
  • Good
  • Business

• In the past, people worked together only when some great disaster threatened.

  

  Walter Ulbricht
  • People
  • Great
  • Together

• Virtual reality is inevitably going to become mainstream - it's only a question of how good it needs to be before the mainstream is willing to use it.

  

  Palmer Luckey
  • Good
  • Reality
  • Question

• The Metropolitan Opera, of course, is the gold standard in opera. The Met experience includes the huge stage, the vast audience, the elaborate sets. Anyone who saw 'Faust' there - I did - knows exactly what hell is like, complete with fire, smoke and terror.

  

  Karen DeCrow
  • Experience
  • Fire
  • Gold

• Well, I'm a professional.

  

  Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
  • Professional
  • Well

• I wanted to write for all children, even those kids who might see language as a threatening thing, even if English is their second language.

  

  Ursula Dubosarsky
  • Children
  • Kids
  • English

• Building a baseball team is like building a house. You look for the best architects, the best builders - and then you let them do their jobs.

  

  Pat Gillick
  • House
  • Team
  • Best

• The heart of our relationship, this natural environment that has blessed us really all along the west coast of North America, on both sides of the border we've realized that this incredible natural wealth comes with a price.

  

  Arthur Daniel Miller
  • Heart
  • America
  • Relationship

• Most of my work has no conventional narrative, so it's not essential to have a beginning and an end - your attention can flow in and out of the experience rather than having a set entry point.

  

  Marco Brambilla
  • Work
  • Experience
  • Attention

• Dorothy was in that state human beings passed through at the beginning of a love affair, in which they desire to say anything and everything to the beloved, to the alter ego, before they have learned what the real Other can and can't understand, can and can't accept.

  

  A. S. Byatt
  • Real
  • Desire
  • Beginning

• In boxing you never know who you're going to face in ring.

  

  Manny Pacquiao
  • Know
  • Never
  • Boxing

• And so take away his work, which was his life [. . .] and all his glory and his great deeds? Make a child and a dotard of him? Keep him to myself at that cost? Make him so mine that he was no longer his?

  

  C. S. Lewis
  • Life
  • Work
  • Great

• 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
  • She
  • Wisdom
  • Beginning