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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People say that the paintings are always big because they're striving for effect, but they're also big so that I don't trip over myself, so that I have room to work, and people can come in and be comfortable.
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That which I have set out in Latin is not my words but the words of God and of apostles and prophets, who of course have never lied. He who believes shall be saved, but he who does not believe shall be damned. God has spoken.
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'Finding Nemo' has spawned so many sort of emotions over the years. I don't even know that you could really understand exactly what parents and kids are seeing in it, but they can see a lot of different stuff.
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The anguish of the third dimension is given its first verbal manifestation in poetic history in King Lear. (p. 18)
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A long time ago, when all the grandfathers and grandmothers of today were little boys and little girls or very small babies, or perhaps not even born, Pa and Ma and Mary and Laura and Baby Carrie left their little house in the Big Woods of Wisconsin.
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Small things amuse small minds.
