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

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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

• No woman is worth more than a fiver unless you're in love with her. Then she's worth all she costs you.

  

  W. Somerset Maugham
  • She

• My first phone was two tin cans tied together with string, and it worked pretty good.

  

  Dolly Parton
  • Together
  • Firsts
  • Phones

• 'The Paris Review's mandate has been the same for fifty years. First and foremost, this magazine is for writers; the editors' task is to support and celebrate them, especially at the beginning of their careers, but also as they move forward, venturing stories that are creative, risky, new.

  

  John D'Agata
  • Support
  • Beginning
  • Paris

• At the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century in Austria, there was a lot of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism in Austria was much more pervasive than in Germany. And Austrians took to Nazi ideas and anti-Semitism much more readily than Germans did, really.

  

  Viggo Mortensen
  • Ideas
  • End
  • First

• I'll tell you what the real problem is: These people are working under the assumption that they know better about what is good for kids, what kids need to learn to get ahead in this world.

  

  Daniel Greenberg
  • People
  • World
  • Good

• 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