Doris Lessing Quotes
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We use our parents like recurring dreams, to be entered into when needed.
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I wasn't an active feminist in the '60s, never have been.
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God knows why nobody ever learns from the preceding generation - but they don't.
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My mother died happily of a stroke in her seventies.
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My father was always so mingled with rage at his life.
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Man, who is he? Too bad, to be the work of God: Too good for the work of chance!
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I didn't go to school much, so I taught myself what I knew from reading.
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When there's a war, people get married.
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The human race has been telling stories since it began.
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None of you ask for anything - except everything, but just for so long as you need it.
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Literature is analysis after the event.
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If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air.
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I got married and I had children because of the Second World War, as all of us did, exclaiming, 'Oh, no, we are never going to bring a child into this wicked world,' but we had children by the dozen and got married.
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You know, looking at it objectively, I've written one or two good books.
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I think a writer's job is to provoke questions. I like to think that if someone's read a book of mine, they've had - I don't know what - the literary equivalent of a shower. Something that would start them thinking in a slightly different way, perhaps. That's what I think writers are for.
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You cannot escape the fact that women mould your first five years, whether you like it or not. And I can't say I do like it very much.
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A story is how we construct our experiences.
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You can't be a Red if you're married to a civil servant.
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There is nothing more boring for an intelligent woman than to spend endless amounts of time with small children.
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What the feminists want of me is something they haven't examined because it comes from religion. They want me to bear witness.
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All one's life as a young woman one is on show, a focus of attention, people notice you. You set yourself up to be noticed and admired. And then, not expecting it, you become middle-aged and anonymous. No one notices you. You achieve a wonderful freedom. It's a positive thing. You can move about unnoticed and invisible.
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I've won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one. I'm delighted to win them all, the whole lot.
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I do have a sense, and I've never not had it, of how easily things can vanish.
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It was OK, us being Reds during the war, because we were all on the same side. But then the Cold War started. Almost overnight we became enemies of people who were close friends - they crossed the street to avoid us.