Doris Lessing Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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I worked three and then six hours a day in my studio with strict discipline and emotion. I obtained awards usually granted to other foreigners during the end-of-year admission tests.
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When I write sad songs, I feel like I'm sewing up a scar in me, and the outcome always feels so much better than when I write happy ones.
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People should know what they want, not just what they don't want.
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I don't play anymore, because I know I'm not going to be a pro golfer. So there's no reason to golf.
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I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning.
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To my real estate agent, Chernobyl is a fixer-upper.
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He who improves an opportunity sows a seed which will yield fruit in opportunity for himself and others.
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We're trying to have the band create something beautiful that hopefully one day, 20 years from now, can be picked up by a kid and hopefully have the same effect that Neil Young had on me, or Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath.
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You can't say what the outcome of a competition is going to be, so now I am ready to accept any result that comes my way, if I give my best shot.
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If you always feel like an imposter, you work harder, and that makes you better at your job. You've got to keep a level of variation; otherwise, you'll end up talking about nails and beauty products all the time.
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I don't think that my work is very moralistic - at least, I try to avoid that. I grew up with that sermonising tendency, and I don't think visual work operates like that.
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Singing in Yiddish was a great thrill for me and came about through Joe Papp, the founder of The Public Theater.
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Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.
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I do take this insane pleasure in world-building. I get the world in my head, but I have to make sure everyone else gets it.
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Spiritual practice should not be confused with grim duty. It is the laughter of the Dalai Lama and the wonder born with every child.
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Sometimes, poor people don't smell too good, so love can have no nose.
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Economic growth is important. But we cannot count on economic growth alone to fund the public education system our children need and deserve.
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Writing a novel is like knocking on a door that will never open. You are so desperate to get in, you will say or do anything. You feel: please take my novel.
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Some of those stories in local newspapers are just as dull and boring as the stories that I get from on-line services, which are basically sort of straight news.
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I want all my books to provoke some kind of response in the reader, to make them think something or feel something or both, and for that to become a part of them and work into their own lives.
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In a way, it's taken me 25 years to acknowledge that I am from the West Coast. I was always sort of pretending I was bicoastal or that I really belonged on the East Coast.
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Yes, I've been in an igloo. They're surprisingly cozy and warm - small, though, you can't really stand up in some.
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It is essential that there should not only be a limit on campaign spending but it should be required to say where that money is spent and how it is spent. I think there has been more abuse in campaign spending, actually, than in campaign contributors.
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Small things amuse small minds.
