Doris Lessing Quotes
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What they critics of Lessing's switch to science fiction didn't realize was that in science fiction is some of the best social fiction of our time.
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My father was always so mingled with rage at his life.
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My mother died happily of a stroke in her seventies.
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The human race has been telling stories since it began.
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When there's a war, people get married.
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I didn't go to school much, so I taught myself what I knew from reading.
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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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God knows why nobody ever learns from the preceding generation - but they don't.
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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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We use our parents like recurring dreams, to be entered into when needed.
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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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You know, looking at it objectively, I've written one or two good books.
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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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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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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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There is nothing more boring for an intelligent woman than to spend endless amounts of time with small children.
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A story is how we construct our experiences.
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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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You can't be a Red if you're married to a civil servant.
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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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What I really can't stand about the feminist revolution is that it produced some of the smuggest, most unselfcritical people the world has ever seen. They are horrible.
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I haven't got the energy to write now.